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Boonesborough 



ITS FOUNDING, PIONEER 

STRUGGLES, INDIAN EXPERIENCES, TRANSYLVANIA DAYS, 

AND REVOLUTIONARY ANNALS 



PFt//i Full Historical Notes and Appendix 



»**»♦*»*»»**»»»»»»■»»»»»***»»»»*»»»■**»»■*»*»»»»»»»» 



BY 



George W. Ranck 

Member of The Filson Club 



^ 





GEORGE \V. KANCK 

Lkxington, Kentucky 
Member of The Filson Club 



FILSON CLUB PUBLICATIONS No. 10 



BOONESBOROUGH 

ITS FOUNDING, 

PIONEER STRUGGLES, INDIAN EXPERIENCES, TRANSYLVANIA 

DAYS, AND REVOLUTIONARY ANNALS 



IVith Full Historical Notes and Appendix 



GEORGE W. RANCK 

Member of The Filson Club 
Author of 

'The Bivouac of the Dead and Its Author," "The Travelling Church, 

"History of Lexington, Kentucky," "The Story of Br>'an's 

Station," " Girty, the White Indian," etc. 

miustrateO 




Louisville, Kentucky 

JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY 

Printers tn TUs Filann flllttb 
1901 

L- 



\ 



THf 1,'SRA.SY OF 

ccmshess. 

Two Cop-ts Received 

APR. 22 1901 

CLASS <^ XXc. N<». 
COPY B. 



^\8 



COPTHIGHTED BT 

THE FILSON CLUB 
1901 



PREFACE. 



BOONESBOROUGH, like a mist of the morning, has 
vanished, and the place which knew it once will 
know it no more forever. Not a cabin of the thirty 
that formed the parallelogram of the fort ; not a picket 
of the bullet-battered lines that encompassed the station, 
and not a pale of the stockades between the cabins is left. 
Not even a chimney, the last of a human habitation to 
perish, is left standing or shows the little mound of debris 
at its base as survivor of its fall. Its former site is an 
unromantic cornfield, where is seen the cultivated soil and 
the gathered crop, instead of preparations for aggressive 
war or stolid defense. So thoroughly has the station 
disappeared that it affords no perch for the owl and no 
hiding-place for the fox. Neither fire nor flood, nor earth- 
quake nor ruthless time has ever more completely swept 
a town from the face of the earth. Other towns in 
Kentucky, like Lystra and Franklinville and Ohiopiomingo, 
have vanished, but they never had any except a paper 
existence, while Boonesborough was a reality. 



iv Preface 

The sites of some of the greatest cities of the world 
were occupied by accident and yet succeeded, while intel- 
ligent design selected others that utterly failed. It is 
easy enough to choose a site and lay off a town, but it 
requires inhabitants and manufactures and trade and per- 
severance to make it a success. When General George 
Rogers Clark, in 1776, led the opposition against the 
Transylvania Colony, and Virginia asserted her old law 
forbidding private citizens to purchase lands from the 
Indians, Transylvania was doomed, and with it Boones- 
borough. It was then only a question of time when the 
town and the fort would transfer their prestige to Har- 
rodsburg and become things of the past. Boone could 
roam through the untrodden forests in search of game, and 
could fight the Indian behind the trees of his native woods 
or on the open plain, but he lacked the municipal tact and 
persistence which builds up towns and turns them into 
cities, and most of his companions were like unto him. 

But gone forever, as it is, Boonesborough yet holds a 
place in the memory and the heart of the living. Im- 
perishable recollections hover over its desolate site and 
bind it with chains of steel to our memories. It was here 
that civilization took its firm stand in the transmontane 
wilderness. Men had earlier roamed over the country as 
hunters and explorers and traders, but in Boonesborough 



Preface v 

they had their wives and children with them, and formed 
there the family circle, without which any attempts at 
civilization are mockeries. The blood that flowed through 
the veins of these fearless and hardy pioneers and warmed 
their hearts and nerved their strong arms yet courses 
through the veins of their descendants and makes the site 
of the old vanished station hallowed ground. As the 
zealous Mohammedan, when journeying to the Beit Allah 
of Mecca, sees in the mirage of the desert the minarets 
and domes and spires of the sacred Mosque, so the loyal 
descendant of the Boonesborough pioneers sees in the 
mists of tradition the fort and stockade and cabins of the 
vanished town as they were when occupied by his ances- 
tors. The classical scholar reveres not more the sites of 
departed Troy and Psestum and Thebes than does the 
descendant of the first settlers the site of Boonesborough. 
Here the Boones, the Hendersons, the Galloways, the 
Harts, and Floyd and Kenton and Ballard and Stoner and 
Holder and Rawlings and Pogue stood like an impregnable 
wall and rolled back the fierce tide of savage warfare until 
civilization and Christianity were established in the pri- 
meval forest. It is the recollection of the hardships endured 
and the courage displayed by our ancestors there that 
makes Boonesborough dear to us and gives it a sure 
place in our memory and heart. 



VI 



Preface 



Every Kentuckian has some conception of vanished 
Boonesborough, and imagines that he carries an image of 
it in his memory hke unto it as it once existed. It is 
well, however, while we are cherishing conceptions of this 
town of the past, that we hold to a conception rightly 
formed. It has now been one hundred and twenty-six 
years since Boonesborough was founded, and during this 
long period no full or adequate history of it has been 
written. It has been reserved for a member of The Filson 
Club, an hundred years after the town had perished, to 
gather the conflicting traditions from their scattered sources, 
and, after separating the true from the false, to weave the 
facts into an exhaustive narrative. This Mr. George W. 
Ranck, the author of the work which follows this preface, 
has done, and here presents Boonesborough as it began 
and progressed and declined and finally disappeared from 
the face of the earth. He who reads Mr. Ranck's nar- 
rative will learn more about this vanished town than any 
one has known since its day in the land. And the 
reader will not only learn much that is new about Boones- 
borough, but he will learn something too important not to 
be known about pioneer life in Kentucky, about the 
attempt of Henderson and Company to establish a pro- 
prietary government by the name of Transylvania in Ken- 
tucky, and about the brave men and women who left 



Preface 



vn 



comfortable homes on the Atlantic slope of the Alleghanies 
and settled in the wilderness of Kentucky, amid wild 
animals and wilder savages, with no protection but their 
own strong arms. Their own courage and skill and 
daring, practically unaided, won the great West from the 
British and the Indians and added it to the rich fruits of 
the Revolutionary War. 

Boonesborough was really the creature of the Transyl- 
vania Colony, and Mr. Ranck very properly began the 
narrative with the treaty of Watauga in the spring of 
1775. by which the southern half of Kentucky was pur- 
chased from the Indians. The building of a protecting 
fort on the acquired lands on the Kentucky River near the 
mouth of Otter Creek and the gathering of pioneer families 
there and the rise of a town around the fort followed in 
the natural order of sequence. And so did Indian war 
and sieges naturally follow, with all their heart-rendin. 
atrocities and sufferings. The confined life of the fort" 
however, in spite of the dangers outside of the pickets' 
soon began to drive the inhabitants to extramural cabins 
upon lands selected for farms. It was not many years 
after this process began before Boonesborough was 
deserted and log cabins with women and children in them 
on bits of cleared land peeped out here and there from 
the dark shadows of the surrounding forest. The steady 



viii Preface 

decline and final extinction of the fort and town naturally 
followed the exodus of their inhabitants to the near and 
distant farms. The whole historic field has been covered, 
embracing every fact and tradition that need be known, 
and including biographic sketches of some of the leading 
characters in those stirring and perilous times. Old and 
rare manuscripts and scarce books and forgotten news- 
papers have been searched, and the whole story told in 
the book before us as it has never been told before. 

Not the least important and instructive part of Mr. 
Ranck's work is its excellent halftone illustrations. These 
are not scattered indiscriminately through the book, as 
illustrations too often are, but appear at the pages where 
they are described and belong. Fine pictures represent 
the old fort, the place of meeting of the delegates, the 
sulphur well, the salt lick, the fresh water spring, the river, 
the ferry, and other views of the landscape, including the 
town of Boonesborough itself with its laid-off streets and 
numbered lots. There is a striking hkeness of Boone, 
and a spirited picture of the treaty men making their way 
back to the fort after they discovered the treachery of 
the Indians. The author has thus covered every prac- 
ticable scene by a suggestive picture. 

Still another merit of the work is the Appendix. 
Extracts from scarce books now inaccessible to the gen- 



Preface ix 

eral reader, transcriptions of manuscripts which exist only 
in single originals at distant places, and articles from old 
newspapers and pamphlets make up the appendix. 
Among the selections is the deed by which the Cherokee 
Indians conveyed to Richard Henderson and his asso- 
ciates for the Transylvania Colony all the southern part 
of Kentucky, embracing about 20,000,000 acres ; the Jour- 
nal kept by Judge Henderson while on his proprietary 
land of Transylvania and while going to and returning 
therefrom ; the proclamations of the Governors of Vir- 
ginia and North Carolina denouncing the Transylvania 
enterprise; the Journal of the proceedings of the assembly 
of Transylvania delegates ; Felix Walker's diary of his 
trip to Boonesborough in 1775, and numerous other 
papers that are valuable to the student of history. 

A book without an index is open to many objections in 
this rapid age. No one has time to turn over the leaves 
and find what he may want to read. The book under 
consideration is open to no such fault. Besides separate 
lists of the illustrations in the text and of articles m the 
appendix, giving the page of each, it has an ample gen- 
eral index, giving each subject and name, and the page 
on which it is found. It is an index, too, which gives 
the initial word with such certainty that we are not 
disappointed when we turn to the given page. 



X Preface 

It will be seen at a glance that the author has gone 
to the original sources for his material, that he has given 
us no rehash of other books and of other writers' opinions, 
and that British records play in this field their very 
important part. Another element of strength and value 
in this volume that no lover of genuine history will fail 
to appreciate is its full and free citation of authorities. 
A quibbler would have to contend with these authorities 
alone — not with the writer of the text. 

It seems, therefore, that the book of which this is a 
preface is a work of merit in all its parts. The history 
of Boonesborough from its beginning in 1775 to its final 
extinction in less than half a century afterward is given 
by it in fullness and in detail. Indeed, the author has 
told all that had need of being told, and it will be long 
before any thing new or important can be added to the 
story as he has told it. The whole historic field has 
been gone over, and from it gleaned every thing that 
related to the vanished town or to its connections, or to 
the men and women who imparted to it their own 
immortality. 

This is the sixteenth publication of The Filson Club. 
The fifteen volumes which preceded it were issued from 
year to year, and have gone forth into the world as pro- 
moters of history and biography. The club began its 



Preface xi 

work in 1884, when it was formed, and it is the intention 
of its members to continue in the same hne of pubHcations 
until all the important matters in Kentucky are the sub- 
jects of monographs and all of the representative men and 
women have biographies. Those of us now living can 
form no just estimate of the value of such publications, 
but those who come after us in the distant future will 
know their worth and bless us for them. 

R. T. DURRETT, 

President of the Fihon Club. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 



* The Author, Frontispiece 

J Daniel Boone, lo 

^ The Sulphur Well i? 

■^ The Lick Spring 19 

^ Site of Fort Boonesborough 25 

^ Meeting of Transylvania House of Delegates, 30 

'Plan of Fort Boonesborough, 35 

Site of Fort Boonesborough from opposite side of river, . 40 

The Hills of Clark County 50 

V Relics of Daniel Boone 66 

Fort Boonesborough before Siege of 1778, 79 

>• Climax of the Treaty 89 

">• Sycamore Hollovv', 104 

s The Town of Boonesborough no 

^Residence of Judge Henderson, 115 

"^Boonesborough Ferry, 125 

X The Old Sycamore, 134 



BOONE8BOROUGH. 



THE spring of 1775 had come. The time had 
arrived not only for the assertion of American 
freedom but for its spread, and "Westward the star of 
empire takes its way." The hour had struck for the 
permanent settlement of Kentucky," and in widely sepa- 
rated regions the hearts of unconscious instruments of 
fate had been fired for the work. But in no American 
Colony was the interest in that distant forest - land keener 
than in North Carolina,^ and in no place in North Caro- 
lina was it so conspicuous as in the scattered little frontier 
settlement of Watauga, ^ in what is now East Tennessee. 



-"to"- 



'See Appendix A for "The Name Kentucky." 

'Which may be accounted for by the fact that Gist, Findlay, Boone, 
many of the Long Hunters, and other Kentucky explorers were residents 
of North Carolina. 

3 The scattered settlement, usually mentioned in a general way as 
"Watauga," straggled, in 1775, with its stockades, cabins, and clearings, 
for quite a distance along the Watauga River, in the region now known 
as Carter County, Tennessee, and then included "The Fort," Sycamore 
Shoals, Colonel Charles Robertson's, "The Old Fields," since occupied by 
Elizabethton, and other interesting sites. As the name Watauga is con- 
nected with sundry things and places in Carter County, it may be well to 
say that this, the original pioneer Watauga we have described, must not 
be confused with the new town of Watauga, on the Southern Railroad, 
six or seven miles from the historic Watauga of which we write. 



2 Boonesborough 

Ever since the preceding fall a train of circumstances had 
kept the minds of its inhabitants on that enticing country. 
First, their old friend and pilot, Daniel Boone," who had 
hunted there longer than any one, and who was stopping 
temporarily at "Snoddy's on the Clinch,"^ had passed 
through their settlement more than once on his way down 
the Valley of the Holston to the principal seats of the 
CherokeesJ Everybody knew of the comradeship between 
Boone and these Overhill Indians ; that he had killed 
deer with them and had slept in their cabins, but they 
also knew that the Cherokees claimed the very game 
lands on which he had hunted so much and where he 
had recently tried to settle with his family, and somehow 
the impression was made that something was ''going on" 
about Kentucky. Later there was quite a buzz in the 
clearings over the news that Boone and two strangers 
' ' from across the Ridge " "> had held powwows with the 
head men of the Cherokees, and, in December, curiosity 
became still more lively when a wagon train of "Indian 
goods " all the way from Fayetteville was stored in 
Watauga and carefully inspected by six silent, watchful 

'See Appendix B for note on "Boone Before 1775." 

° See footnote on page 38, and Appendix C, for "Boone's First Attempt 
to Colonize Kentucky." 

5 Chota, Tellico, and Tellassee. 

•• The Blue Ridge Mountains, which shut off the infant settlement from 
the old communities of North Carolina. 



Boonesborough 3 

chiefs of the Overhill tribes. On Christmas Day the 
whole thing came out, as the shrewd frontiersmen had 
guessed, when ' ' Richard Henderson, for himself and Com- 
pany," pubhcly advertised for "settlers for Kentucky 
lands about to be purchased,"' and Indian runners car- 
ried the order of Ocanostota, the head chief of the 
Cherokees, for a spring meeting of his people at the 
Watauga settlement to consider, among other things, a 
grant, already substantially agreed upon, of those same 
far-spreading lands. Settlers said it was plain now why 
Boone had kept his big family conveniently near to the 
Warrior's Path ever since he had been driven back from 
Walden's Ridge ; that he had never once given up his 
interrupted plan to plant a colony in Kentucky, but to 
decrease the risks he wanted to make his next start with 
the full consent of the Cherokees, and so had suggested 
and urged the formation of this new Company, and would 
accomplish his purpose as its agent. 

Judge Henderson,' the ostensible head of the Company, 
was one of the leading lawyers of the Colony of North 

' Colonial Records of North Carolina. 

° Richard Henderson was a native of Hanover County, Virginia, where 
he was bom April 20, 1735, but had been a citizen of North Carolina 
since 1756, when his father, Samuel Henderson, settled there. He was a 
self-made man. His education had been deferred and his opportunities 
came late, but he was gifted with pluck and ability, and when he did start 
he made rapid progress, and especially in his chosen profession, the law, 



4 Boonesborough 

Carolina, and had until recently been one of the Asso- 
ciate Justices of its Supreme Court. Though rather 
showy, he was a man of genuine ability and culture, was 
self-reliant and a worker, and, though noticeable always 
for enterprise and ambition, had surprised the Colony by 
the magnitude and boldness of his present venture. All 
of the nine members of the Company were citizens of 
North Carolina and "from over the Ridge." Three of 
them were residents of the then very extensive County 
of Granville, viz : Henderson, John Williams, his cousin 
and a bright lawyer, and Leonard Henley Bullock, ex- 
sheriff of the county and a connection also. The others, 
who lived in or near the adjoining County of Orange, and 
who were mainly in commercial life, were James Hogg, 
a Scotchman and talented man of affairs ; Nathaniel 
Hart," one of the first of the Company to "sound" the 
Indians ; Thomas and David Hart, his brothers, and John 
Luttrell and "William Johnstone. 

The announcement of so novel an enterprise and at 

and in 1768 was appointed one of the Associate Justices of North Carolina. 
This position he held until his court was closed in 1770 by the Regulators, 
who rose against the corrupt and arbitrary exactions of the royal government 
of the province. After this he is said to have sustained pecuniary losses, 
and in 1774 he seized upon Boone's suggestion as a means of repairing 
and augmenting his fortune. (Wheeler, Ramsey, and Draper.) 

'Nathaniel Hart was born in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1734, but 
moved to North Carolina in his youth. Like Henderson, he had taken 
sides against the Regulators in 177 1. 



B oonesboroiigk 5 

such a disturbed and threatening juncture of pubhc 
affairs created a sensation, and at least one officer ' of the 
Colony anxiously inquired "If Dick Henderson had lost 
his head? " But "Dick" not only still possessed that con- 
venience, but had used it. With the aid of Boone he 
had carefully investigated Kentucky, and had decided that 
now was the very time to strike. The Shawanese and 
other Northern Indians had but recently been defeated 
at Point Pleasant, and had obligated themselves by treaty 
to hunt no more on the Kentucky side of the Ohio. This 
and prior treaties seemed to leave no other Indian claim- 
ants to the Louisa' country but the Cherokees, and, as 
to Great Britain, her claim seemed destined to utter extin- 
guishment in the conflict she was so rapidly forcing upon 
the Colonies. The importance of the movement was plain 
enough to Josiah Martin, the royal Governor of North 
Carolina, and on the loth of February, 1775, he issued a 

'Archibald Nelson, in Col. Rec. N. C. 

"^ Kentucky seems never to have been known by any but Indian names 
until a short time before 1775, when "Louisa" came into limited use 
among the whites. The generally accurate Bradford helped to perpetuate 
the error that the Kentucky River was given the English name "Louisa" 
by Doctor Walker twenty-six years before this treaty, but not only does 
Marshall declare that Walker did not reach the interior of the country, 

but later writers assert that it was a tributary of the Big Sandy as 

given on Jefferson's map — that the explorer of 1750 so named. It was 
some time after Walker's tour before the name of this tributary was applied 
to the country itself, and then, fortunately, it quickly subsided before the 
original and ancient Indian name — Kentucky. 



6 Boonesborough 

proclamation ' denouncing it as "a lawless undertaking, " 
' ' an infraction of the Royal prerogative, " and threatened 
the Company, if it persisted in its course, ' ' with the pain 
of His Majesty's displeasure and the most rigorous pen- 
alties of the law." The greatness of the political change 
that had already occurred is evidenced by the fact that 
this proclamation was completely ignored. 

Boone, who had been commissioned by the Company 
to open a road to the Kentucky River, never ceased col- 
lecting woodmen in Powell's Valley for the work, and 
concentrated them at Long Island, ' in the Holston. While 
arrangements for the expedition were being made, pro- 
visions for the entertainment of the Cherokees went on 
to the appointed conference ground, and so did the Indians 
and the white men, and early in March, 1775, the biggest 
crowd that had ever gathered in the Watauga Settlement of 
North Carolina was encamped about the stockaded cabins 
of Sycamore Shoals. ^ This spot, which took its name 

' For text of proclamation see Appendix D. 

^ This noted island, which was about twenty-six miles from the appointed 
rendezvous, is nearly three miles long, is in main Holston River near the 
junction of its north and south forks, and is included in the present Sullivan 
County, Tennessee. 

' Boone, in his Filson memoir, merely states that the treaty took place 
"at Watauga," without specifying the particular spot in the settle- 
ment that was used. Felix Walker, in his narrative, says it occurred "at 
Colonel Charles Robertson's," whose home tract in 1775 was about a mile 
west of Sycamore Shoals, but which, with Fort Watauga near by, often at that 



B oonesborough 7 

from the great sycamore trees which adorned it, which 
was then the seat of the now famous Watauga Associa- 
tion, and which is distinguished by its historic memories, ' 
was on the southern bank of the Watauga River about 
three miles below "The Old Fields," the site of the present 
Elizabethton, in what is now Carter County, Tennessee. 
It was a rendezvous, familiar to the Indians, in a valley 
that has long been known for its fertility and beauty, and 
here, on the spacious stretch of rich bottom lands that 
were bordered on one side by the winding river and on 
the other by the swelling foothills of Yellow Mountain, 
tents and wigwams were pitched and the solemn, cere- 
monious, and deliberate conference was held. The nego- 
tiators in behalf of the Company were Henderson and 
Boone, Nathaniel Hart and Luttrell. The most prom- 
time designated the general Sycamore Shoals neighborhood. In his Annals 
of Tennessee, Ramsey, who was personally familiar with the historic spots 
included in the Watauga Settlement, and who gave these points especial 
attention, definitely locates the treaty ground at Sycamore Shoals, which 
seems to be the verdict of both tradition and later investigation, which further 
specify that it included the land opposite the late residence of Alfred M. C. 
Taylor and present home of E. D. Jobe. The writer is indebted to the 
courtesy of Messrs. N. E. Hyder and D. N. Reese, of Carter County, Ten- 
nessee, for facts about the topography of the Watauga region. 

" It was the seat of that famous little republic, the Watauga Associa- 
tion, which was the beginning of the political history of Tennessee ; the 
place where the permanent settlement of Kentucky was assured, and the 
rendezvous five years after of the patriot riflemen who rode from thence 
to King's Mountain and victory. 



8 Boonesborough 

inent representatives of the Indians were Ocanostota, 
the aged, crippled, and distinguished head of the Chero- 
kees ; the remarkable Attacullaculla, withered and even 
more aged, but still reputed the ablest of the Indian diplo- 
matists ; Savanooko, and Dragging Canoe.' 

Days were consumed in the consideration of the boun- 
daries and extent of the territory the Company desired, 
the price offered, and the wisdom of making such a sale, 
and interpreters were kept busy translating "talks" and 
documents and speeches. Earnest protests against the 
treaty were made by orators of the Cherokees, and espe- 
cially by the eloquent and prophetic Dragging Canoe, but 
without effect, and on the 1 7th of March ' ' The Great 
Grant "^ was signed, and for the merchandise then stored 
on the ground and valued at ^10,000 Henderson and 
his associates were declared the owners of territory south 
of the Kentucky River, comprising more than half of the 
present State of Kentucky.^ The twelve hundred Indians 
present assented to the treaty, and, though a few of them 
grumbled that they had received only one shirt apiece for 

' Virginia Archives. 

'So named to distinguish it from the " Path Deed," signed at the same 
conference, by which the Cherokees granted Henderson and Company 
another great tract which was on the Holston, Clinch, and Powell rivers. 
(See United States Register for 1840.) 

3 For full description of the boundary of the Kentucky grant, see copy 
of the deed in Appendix E. 



Boonesborottgh 9 

their share of the territory, the transaction seems to have 
been open and fair,' and certainly they all joined at the 
close of the meeting in the big feast the Company had 
provided. 

The plans of the Company for taking possession of the 
magnificent Kentucky domain had already been arranged. 
A spot had been selected for headquarters directly on the 
Kentucky River, near the mouth of one of its tributary 
streams, which was known even then as Otter Creek, ^ and, 
as a road to it was a matter of immediate necessity, the 
Company, assured of success, determined to rush the 
making of it in advance, and Boone left Sycamore Shoals 
for Long Island before the treaty was concluded, and just 
as soon as he could be spared, in order to direct the 
work. His quota of woodmen with their hatchets and 
axes were all in waiting at the island, and among others 
there who had cast in their fortunes with the expedition 
were his brother, the tried explorer, Squire Boone, and his 
old Yadkin neighbor, Richard Calloway, who was consider- 
ably older than Boone, Mvas a native of Caroline County, 

' See deposition of Charles Robertson in Appendix F. 

^ Probably so named by an early hunter from the Peaks of Otter, though 
the otter itself was found there. 

3 Calloway was born about 1724. Daniel Boone, according to the 
records of the monthly meeting of Exeter Township (now Berks County), 
Pennsylvania, was born November 2 (new style), 1734, and Doctor Draper 
says that date was entered by Boone himself on his family record. 



lo Boonesborough 

Virginia, had been a captain in the French and Indian 
War, and was a colonel of the Bedford County militia 
when he removed to North Carolina.' The Company 
also included Captain William Twetty and seven other 
adventurous land hunters from Rutherford County, North 
Carolina. 

On the tenth of March, all being ready, this memorable 
party of thirty mounted men, armed, but mainly for hunt- 
ing, as no trouble was expected from Indians, and followed 
by negro servants, loaded pack-horses, and hunting dogs, 
started out under the command of Captain Daniel Boone 
to connect buffalo roads, Indian traces, trails of hunters and 
Indian traders, and the great Warrior Path, to cut through 
forests and canebrakes that were trackless, blaze the dis- 
tances on mile-trees, and thus to make the first regular 
and continuous road through the wilderness to the Ken- 
tucky River. Chmbing the dreary ridges that loomed up 
between them and Cumberland Gap, they threaded that 
sublime defile,^ forded rivers that for ages had been name- 
less and swallowed up in a region vast and solitary, were 
heard of no more until they had toiled over that depression 
of the since historic Big Hill of the present county of 

' Draper. 

^ Cumberland Gap is one of the grandest of natural passages. Its 
narrow roadway extends for six miles between mountain sides that rise 
twelve hundred feet above it. 




DANIEL BOONE. 

(In his old age.) 
From an Oil Painting by Chester Harding, owned by Colonel R. T. Durrett, of Louisville. Kentucky. 



BoonesboroMgh n 

Madison, Kentucky, known to this day as ' ' Boone's Gap, " 
and had camped by a forest stream five miles south of the 
site of the then undreamed-of town of Richmond," Ken- 
tucky. Here, on the 25th of March, before daylight, after 
an undisturbed journey of two weeks, and while confident 
of continued peace, they were suddenly fired on by Indians, 
who quickly retired. A negro manservant of Captain 
Twetty was instantly killed. Captain Twetty himself was 
mortally wounded and soon died, and a young companion, 
Fehx Walker, was dangerously wounded.' Only two 
nights after this another attack was made, and presum- 
ably by the same Indians, and this time on a little detach- 
ment which had camped near a stream some distance from 
the main party. With characteristic imprudence' the men 
had hghted a fire and were drying their badly-soaked moc- 
casins when the savages surprised them, killing and scalp- 
ing Thomas McDowell and Joseph McPheeters, and stam- 
peding the balance, who ran barefooted through the snow 
and escaped. One of the men, Samuel Tate, of Powell's 
Valley, took to the stream to hide his tracks, for it was 
a moonlight night, and from that day to this the stream 
has been known as Tate's Creek. ^ Boone, who evidently 

' Walker's Narrative, Appendix G, and depositions of pioneers. 

^Walker's Narrative, Appendix H, and Boone's letter to Henderson. 

3 Boone. Nat. Hart, junior, in Frankfort Commonwealth of July 25, 
1838. Hart errs in date of this attack, which is correctly given in Boone's 
letter, which was written only four days after the affair. 



12 Boonesborough 

thought this was the beginning of a serious effort to drive 
all the white people from the country, and who seems to 
have been invested by the Company with military powers, 
posted off a courier at once, ordering ' ' all of the lower com- 
panies " of hunters and settlers then in the vicinity of the 
present Harrodsburg' to concentrate at the mouth of Otter 
Creek, and on the first of April, after the burial of the 
dead and careful attention to the wounded man, he started 
a messenger to Judge Henderson, urging him to bring or 
send aid as soon as possible, and said in his quiet, self- 
contained way of the excited people who were sure that 
another Indian war had commenced, that they were "very 
uneasy," and that he and his men would start that day 
for the mouth of Otter Creek, and would erect a fort there. 
Boone did not even know for certain that Henderson 
was yet on the road, but he was. Prompt and energetic, 
he had completed his preparations two days after the 
treaty was signed, and on the third day, the 20th of 
March,' in spite of a threatened denunciation from another 

' Henderson says in his journal: "These men had got possession some 
time before we got here." 

It is plain from both Boone and Henderson that the site of Harrods- 
burg had been occupied just before they came, but Boonesborough, organ- 
ized, garrisoned, and provisioned, was the only substantial settlement in 
Kentucky in the spring of 1775, and the only one that insured the per- 
manent occupancy of the country. 

^ Henderson's Journal, Appendix I. 



B oonesborough 13 

governor, Lord Dunmore, he started from sturdy little 
Watauga toward the distant land of his golden dream. 
The expedition was a prophecy of permanent occupation, 
for it included not only forty mounted riflemen ' and quite 
a number of negro slaves, but a drove of beeves, forty 
pack-horses, and a train of wagons loaded with provis- 
ions, ammunition, material for making gunpowder, seed 
corn, garden seed, and a varied store of articles of prime 
necessity at an isolated settlement. Henderson was accom- 
panied by four other members of the Company, viz : the 
Harts and John Luttrell, by his brother, Samuel Hender- 
son, and by the patriotic William Cocke,' who had recently 
declined militia service under the royal Governor of Vir- 
ginia, whose proclamation 3 was issued the very day after 
they started, threatening the Company with fine and 
imprisonment if it persisted in the occupancy of crown 
lands in Virginia "under a pretended purchase from the 
Indians." Cocke was from Amelia County, Virginia, and 
had left his. young wife at Watauga when he started to 
' ' prospect. " He was a stranger to Henderson, who little 
suspected what material was in this black-eyed, black- 
haired rifleman of twenty-seven. Another member of the 
party was ^\'illiam Bailey Smith, one of the witnesses of 

'Walker and Calk. 

^Appendix, Henderson's Journal. 

^For text of Dunmore's proclamation see Appendix J. 



14 Boonesborough 

the recent treaty, who was going out as surveyor.' He, 
too, was a native of Virginia, where he had served as major 
of miHtia, but had lately migrated to North Carolina. He 
was a tall, rollicking, unstable bachelor, energetic and 
brave, but with quite a turn for embellishing facts. 

The expedition, following directly in Boone's tracks, 
managed in ten days, after clearing the road still more, 
to get through with the wagons to the last cabin on the 
blazed route leading up to Cumberland Gap. This log 
shelter was occupied by Captain Joseph Martin, the 
Company's agent for the Powell's Valley division of its 
purchase, who with several men seems to have gone on 
in advance of Henderson's party. Martin knew that region 
and the savages who frequented it, for he had explored 
it as a peltry buyer, and the cabin "^ is said to have been 
the same one he had used five years before this time 
when he had established a little trading -post at this 
distant and lonely spot, from which he had subsequently 

been driven away by the Indians. Here at Martin's, 

\, 

' Draper. 

''This cabin or station was in what is now Lee County, Virginia, and 
is known as Boone's Path Post-office. Captain Martin, who at the above- 
mentioned time was about thirty-five, was a native of Albemarle County, 
Virginia. He was a soldier in the French and Indian War, later on was 
a fur trader, and in 1769 settled in Powell's Valley. He served as cap- 
tain of a company of scouts in Dunmore's War of 1774, and at its close 
became interested in the Henderson and Company scheme. (N. Cyclopedia 
of American Biography, Volume VII.) 



Boonesborough 15 

Henderson's party was joined by William Calk and four 
other immigrants from Virginia, and here they had to give 
up their wagons, hide sulphur, salt, and overplus of other 
heavy material, and start out with pack-horses only to 
carry their baggage over the freshly marked but very 
narrow trace. It was on the 7th of April,' when they 
had just reached the Gap, that Boone's letter about the 
Indian attack arrived, striking the camp like a small 
bombshell and causing a few of the men to start on the 
back track that very night. The next day they met the 
first of several companies of panic-stricken adventurers 
who had started from Kentucky at the earliest news of 
savage troubles, and it became at once vitally important 
to notify Boone in advance of the slow-moving pack-train 
that aid was approaching in order to encourage his men 
to hold their ground. It was the tenth of the month 
and they had reached the banks of the Cumberland 
River before any thing was done. There, when most of 
the force had been further demoralized by the sight of 
more fleeing refugees, when Henderson despaired of find- 
ing a messenger to Boone, and when everybody was 
expecting to hear that even Boone's party had turned 
back, the gallant Captain Cocke volunteered^ to be the 

' Henderson's letter, Appendix K. 
' Henderson's letter, Appendix L. 



i6 Boonesborough 

courier to the unterrified pioneer. No one offered to go 
with him. So, provided with "a good Queen Anne mus- 
ket, plenty of ammunition, a tomahawk, a large 'cuttoe'-' 
knife, a Dutch blanket, and no small quantity of jerked 
beef," he started out alone on a ride of a hundred and 
thirty miles over a wild and solitary path which, according 
to the stampeded throng, was beset by murderous ambus- 
cades.^ It was one of the most romantic deeds in the 
annals of the wilderness, and the hero of it was destined 
to be heard of again. 

But the sturdy and determined Boone had not turned 
back. He had started, as he said he would, from "the 
battle-ground, " had cut a way through the cane down the 
meandering course of Otter Creek to the southern bank 
of the Kentucky River, and had there connected his path 
with a great buffalo trace which led broad and clear to 
the site, on the same side of the river, which he had 
chosen for the official seat of the Company. As the 
horsemen moved on there was a sudden sound like the 
trampling of many feet, and when with eager interest 
they hastened nearer to the selected ground they saw a 

' Corruption of the French word "couteau" and redundancy besides. 

' According to Mr. William Chenault, the historical writer of Richmond, 
Kentucky, Cocke was fortunate enough before he reached Boone's camp to 
catch up with another horseman named Page Portwood, and the two then 
journeyed together. 



H 

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B oonesborough 17 

drove of two or three hundred buffalo' making off from 
a salt lick in the midst of it and followed by young 
calves that played and skipped about as they went, 
unconscious of an enemy that was to nearly wipe their 
kind from the face of the earth. The ponderous beasts 
forded the river and disappeared, and the haunt that 
they had known for unnumbered ages was abandoned 
to the white man forever. The woodsmen realized with 
relief and some wonder that the project that so many had 
shaken their heads at so solemnly was really accomplished. 
Here the road ended. How long they seemed to have 
labored at it! Day after day they had toiled, chopping down 
saplings, cutting away vines and overhanging branches, 
blazing the way through woods, marking mile-trees, remov- 
ing logs and fallen timber, connecting paths, filling sink- 
holes, burning ways through dead brush, logging streams 
for future footmen, cutting swaths through almost endless 
canebrakes, and so pushing that rough, thread-Hke but all- 
important trace deeper and deeper into the silent wilder- 
ness, until home and settlements seemed left behind forever. 
But the work was finished at last. At last in deed and in 
truth they stood by that river Kentucky which so often had 
seemed but a fable and a dream. The settlement site, 
where the long road and historic march terminated, included 

' Walker's Narrative. 

4 



i8 Boonesborough 

a beautiful level in a sheltered hollow, where Boone gave 
the order to halt. It was an ideal place for a camp." 
The rich soil, thanks to generations of animals that had 
haunted the lick, was open, firm, and almost free from 
undergrowth, and, except about the trampled lick and in 
the broad bufifalo path, was adorned, early as it was,' with 
great patches of fine white clover and thickly carpeted 
with a natural grass incomparable for richness and beauty, 
now so widely known as "Kentucky Bluegrass. "^ The 
spot was blessed with two bold springs, a feature whose 
importance no one but a pioneer could appreciate, and 
which, more than any thing else, caused Boone to select it. 

' Boone, Walker, and Henderson. 

^According to the journals of early settlers and to Filson and Imlay, 
spring began much earlier in the days of the pioneers than now. The 
destruction of the once all-pervading forests worked a great change in the 
climate of Kentucky. 

3 The familiar tradition that blue grass was growing at Boonesborough 
in 1775 is fully accepted by the writer, but not the story that "it grew 
from seeds planted by an English woman who settled there when Boone 
came." There was not only no white woman of any nationality at the fort 
until September, 1775, but the evidence is incontestable that blue grass 
was known as a native Kentucky product long before that time. James 
Nourse in his journal says, under date of May 30, 1775, that the growth 
of blue grass in central Kentucky was "amazing," while Gist in his journal 
of 1 75 1 mentions blue grass as a product of the almost unknown country 
of the Miami Indians nearly a quarter of a century before the white man 
settled permanently in the western wilderness. The term "blue grass" is 
misleading, for, like all other grasses, it is green, and its' apparently contra- 
dictory name can only be accounted for as an abbreviation of ' ' blue 
limestone grass," for it reaches its highest state of perfection on the 
blue limestone soil of Kentucky. 



X 



n 
T. 







B oonesborough 19 

The spring that was nearest the river was a sulphur' 
one, which soon accounted to the experienced woodsmen 
for the existence of the Hck around it, for they found that 
the soil had been impregnated for ages with salt' which 
the sulphur water contained. The other spring, which 
was still further from the river, furnished an abundant 
supply of fresh water, but, curiously enough, it eventually 
became known as "The Lick Spring," a name that the 
sulphur one was naturally entitled to. Not far from them 
both were grouped some of the grandest trees that ever 
delighted the human eye. Four of them were especially 
noticeable. Of these, three were immense sycamores, ^ 
whose white trunks had been polished by the incessant 
touch of the salt-hunting elk and buffalo and deer, and 
one was an elm so magnificent in size and so exceptional 
in its proportions and in the spread of its far-reaching 
branches that one who saw it in all its glory, and had a 

'The terms "salt spring" and -salt lick" are not synonymous, as 
some authorities on Kentucky seem to have supposed. Filson mentions a 
salt "spring" at Boonesborough, meaning, probably, a lick, for none of 
the actual settlers of the place record the existence of a spring of that 
kind in the locality, and so far as now known the lick was the result of 
the salt precipitated from the water of the sulphur spring, and not from 
a common salt one. Felix Walker, writing in his old age, speaks of both 
springs as sulphur ones, an error which the waters themselves make plain. 

^Chloride of sodium, or common salt. 

3 The occidental plane tree, called in some American localities the 
buttonwood tree. 



20 Bo ones borough 

soul to appreciate it, called it "divine."' Near by the 
ancient river ran solemn and beautiful, deep down between 
the rugged steepness of its southern side and the wooded 
heights and everlasting hills that shut in the other shore. 
The natural charms of the distant treaty ground of Syca- 
more Shoals were strangely duplicated in the camping- 
ground of "Sycamore Hollow." And here, on the ist of 
April, ^ 1775. about a mile and a quarter below the mouth 
of Otter Creek, Boone and his harassed and tired woods- 
men unloaded their horses, cooked a simple meal, and, 
after a good long rest, began the erection of several log 
huts for temporary shelter and defense. ^ They were 
located "about sixty yards from the river, "♦ something 
over two hundred yards southwest of the lick,^ and con- 
stituted what was immediately named "Fort Boone."* 
This so-called "fort" was neglected from the start. The 
road-makers were so much engrossed with securing land and 
in the wholesale destruction of animals for their skins that 

' Henderson. 

^ Boone. 

' '• Daniel Boone had prevailed upon fifteen men to assist him in 
erecting some small huts for defense," says an extract from a manuscript 
fragment of William Cocke. (Copy in Wis. H. Library.) 

■• Boone's own words. 

5 Compare distances given by Henderson, W. B. Smith, and Bowman. 

* It seems to have received that name as soon as erected, and is so 
called familiarly in both Henderson's and Calk's journals, under date of 
April 20, 1775. The "borough" termination was added later on. 



Boonesborough 21 

even the killing of one of their comrades by the Indians 
on the 4th of April ' did not move them to complete it. 
It is plain, though, that only the coolness and intrepidity of 
Boone prevented the country from being entirely aban- 
doned, as it was the year before. Henderson afterward 
declared "it was owing to Boone's confidence in us and 
the people's in him that a stand was ever attempted."^ 
The whole panic subsided as quickly as it had started 
when it was found that the attacks came from a ridicu- 
lously small number of adventurous Indians. Fortunately 
for the settlers, all such violent acts of bad faith were 
strongly condemned by the chivalric and influential Corn- 
stalk.' The treaty of Point Pleasant was, for a time at 
least, observed, and for more than a year from the date 
of this last murder no regular party of Indians visited 
Kentucky, and no skulker did mischief at Boone's settle- 
ment, except in one solitary instance. ^ It was a blessed 
season of peace, and so when Captain Cocke arrived the 
savages were almost forgotten, and he, greatly to his 
surprise, found that his plucky adventure and the letters 
he brought excited as much interest as the news of 
reinforcements which he had risked his life to bring. 

' Boone's Nar. 

^Henderson's letter of July 12, 1775, Appendix. The Company, at its 
September meeting, granted Boone two thousand acres of land for his 
services. 

3 Williams' letter, Appendix. 



22 Boonesdorotcgk 

Judge Henderson and party, which now included Robert 
and Samuel McAfee,' reached the unfinished and only 
half-watched little fort on the 20th of April, the Judge's 
fortieth birthday. They were welcomed with a discharge 
of rifles and with much rejoicing, and were all seated 
down forthwith to a dinner of cold water and lean buffalo 
beef, which the Judge declared was the most joyful ban- 
quet he ever saw. Of that there could not be the shadow 
of a doubt, for with it ended the most intense and pro- 
tracted strain of care and anxiety he had ever experienced. 
The immense region of incalculable value for which he 
and his Company had risked so much, and which day 
after day for many days seemed about to slip from their 
grasp, was still safe, and a journey of a solid month, 
which, to one used to inns, offices, and court -rooms, 
seemed a solid year of -hardships, aggravations, and mis- 
eries, was over. To such a man, worn out and disgusted, 
the lifting of such a burden changed the poorest hunter's 
meal into a banquet fit for the gods. And to the negroes, 
who saw an "Ingin, " bloody - handed and awful, behind 
every rock and tree on the route, the sight of the little 
log huts was as a sight of heaven itself, and their loud 
laughter, merry songs, and exclamations of delight echoed 

' Henderson's journal. Henderson met them returning to Virginia and 
persuaded them to go back. 



B oonesborough 23 

along the river and among the very hill-tops. But with 
eighty persons in the united companies, including boys 
and negroes, the food question was a serious one, and 
especially since the improvident woodsmen had quickly 
driven away the but lately abounding multitudes of big 
game. Even this early in the action squads of hunters, 
detailed from the sixty-five riflemen," had to range fifteen, 
twenty, and even thirty miles away for the wild meat 
that was almost the sole dependence of the settlers, for 
bread was already becoming a rarity and promised to give 
out altogether long before the corn crop^' could mature. 
Fortunately some of Boone's men had planted corn a few 
days after they arrived. More was now planted, and com- 
panies were organized to work it in common — the mem- 
bers signing an agreement to appear every morning at 
the blast of a horn or sound of a drum and labor in the 
fields or stand guard while others worked, as the "cap- 
tain " required. 3 

Henderson saw as soon as he came that his men, 
stores, and especially his gunpowder, would require much 
more commodious and substantial shelter than either his 
tents or Boone's little cabins could afford. It is also 

' Cocke. 

- Of course we refer here only to maize or Indian com, the accepted 
meaning of the word in America. 
^ United States Register. 



24 Boonesborough 

intimated that Boone's position was exposed to rifle fire 
from the over-topping hills on the other side of the river, 
which is doubtful, considering the distance, but especially 
the fact that the forests on both sides were then so 
dense as to completely shut off observation. But it might 
be that danger from very probable overflow of the river 
was considered. Be that as it may, Henderson decided 
at once to erect a fort that would be large enough and 
strong enough to accommodate and protect the stores and 
present settlers, and be capable of easy future extension. 
He selected a site for it on the opposite side of the lick 
from Boone's quarters and about three hundred yards from 
them," but staked off the line of its front wall within 
less than a hundred yards of the lick itself, from which 
it was reached by a hilly ascent. The chosen spot, there- 
fore, was much higher than the camp-ground it overlooked, 
which soon became known as "The Hollow" — the "Syca- 
more Hollow " of to-day — which was much deeper in 
pioneer times than it is now. The fort site was on a 
plateau, and was probably as close to the river as the 
log "huts," but though it was many feet above the water, 
it could hardly be said to have extended along a cliff, as 
it has sometimes been represented. At any rate, as far 
back as the memory of the oldest residents of the neigh- 

' Henderson and Cocke. 



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Boonesborough 25 

borhood goes, the southern bank of the river has always 
fallen away from the spot, as it does now, in a succession 
of httle ridges, and the site does not appear nearly as 
elevated as it really is, and especially when viewed from 
the river itself or from the opposite shore. The selected 
ground was occupied by Henderson and most of the last 
comers on Saturday, April 2 2d, the third day after they 
reached the settlement.' Nearly a week was consumed 
in making a "clearing," felhng trees, shaping and notch- 
ing logs, and splitting clapboards, but on the 29th the 
fort was begun, under the supervision of Daniel Boone, 
with the building of a small log magazine, which seems to 
have been half under ground, with a shed roof covered 
with clay to protect it from sparks that would surely come 
from chimneys and snapping flints, from ' ' live chunks " 
that settlers were always borrowing from each other to 
start fires with, and from possible torches that attacking 
Indians might use. One of the earliest cabins, one story 
high, erected after this was made especially commodious to 
accommodate the Company's supplies, which were thrown 
open to an eager crowd of rangers, hunters, and road- 
makers, to whom the Company was indebted for services.^ 

' Henderson's Manuscript Journal, Appendix. 

'In one item of the Company's ledger Michael Stoner is charged with 
'' £l 3s 6d for powder, lead, and osnaburgs," and credited with ";fio los 
for work making roads to Cantucke." (Nat. Hart, junior, in Frankfort 
Commonwealth.) 

5 



\ 



26 Boonesborough 

This was the first store ever opened in Kentucky. Judge 
Henderson took up his quarters in a block-house erected 
at this time. It formed an angle of the defense — the 
angle nearest the river. A number of other cabins had 
also been built, when it was discovered that Indian signs 
had ceased, and forthwith the workmen relaxed their exer- 
tions, and, much to the disgust of the leading spirits, the 
completion of the fort was postponed. The error has 
been carelessly perpetuated that Boonesborough Station 
was entirely finished at this time, and it is even pictured 
with the stars and stripes flying over the front gate in 
1775, in spite of the fact that the flag was not adopted 
by Congress until 1777. It is gratifying to know that 
the shape and general outline of this famous wooden 
stronghold are not matters of mere conjecture. A plan 
of the fort, designed at this very time and in the hand- 
writing of Judge Henderson himself, was long preserved,' 
and a copy of it is herewith given. The building of the 
station, as far as it was prosecuted in the spring of 1775, 
was done in accordance with this plan, which was fully 
carried out later on. P'ortunately the clearing was exten- 
sive and ultimately cut no small figure as a defensive 
feature of the place. A few trees were left standing inside 

'It was ill the possession of James Hall, the historical author, as late 
as 1835, and was copied by him. 



BoonesboroiLgk 27 

the stockade, and the tops of several others that grew 
down on the rugged slope to the river projected above 
the bank back of the fort, but, though stumps were plen- 
tiful, the long rifles of the pioneers had a pretty clear 
sweep of the ground in the rear of the defense, along the 
descent to the springs in "the hollow," and for a con- 
siderable stretch toward a long ridge that extended at 
quite a distance off in front of the fort. This continuous 
hill soon received the name of " Hackberry Ridge." 

On the 26th of this month, while the woodsmen on 
the banks of the Kentucky were busy at their clearing, 
the representatives of the Company in distant North Caro- 
lina sought, through a skillful letter ' that reflects the uncer- 
tain condition of the times, to secure for their enterprise the 
influence and support of two already conspicuous lights 
of the opening Revolution — Patrick Henry and Thomas 
Jefferson. Shortly after this Judge Henderson formulated 
"a plan of government by popular representation" for 
the Company's wilderness domain, and on the 8th of May, 
in behalf of the proprietors, ordered an election of mem- 
bers of a " House of Delegates of the Colony of Transyl- 
vania " to meet on the 23d of that month at Boones- 
borough.^ In this call of the 8th of May the Colony and 
its "capital" are formally and for the first time given the 

' For letter, see Appendix M. 

' See Journal of the House, Appendix N. 



28 Boonesboi^oiLgh 

names respectively of "Transylvania" and " Boonesbor- 
ough," which they bore from that date. Elections were 
duly held at the four little settlements ' south of the Ken- 
tucky River, and on Tuesday, the 23d of May, 1775, the 
chosen representatives of the Colony, rifles in hand, rode 
up to the log quarters of the Chief Proprietor, Judge Hen- 
derson. But while a few absolutely necessary cabins had 
been built, the fort was so incomplete and encumbered that 
the "divine elm" in the hollow was selected as the tem- 
porary forum of the capital. Here the delegates did their 
preliminary work, and the next day, the 24th, under the 
spreading dome that the Immortal Architect himself had 
fashioned, and which overshadowed what an eye-witness 
called "a heavenly green" of fine white native clover, was 
attempted for the first time in the vast region west of 
the AUeghanies the founding of an independent State which 
proclaimed that sublime axiom that ' ' all power is orig- 
inally in the people"'' — a proprietary government built 
largely on the lines of a republic. A House of Delegates 
for the Colony was there and then organized, and was 
formally opened by Judge Henderson in behalf of the 
Proprietors with a carefully written and statesmanlike 
speech, "^ in which the independence of "the newborn 

' Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, Boiling Spring, six miles southeast of 
Harrodsburg, and St. Asaph's, a mile west of the present Stanford. 
^ House Journal, Appendix. 



Boonesborough 29 

country" is asserted in the declaration, "We have the 
right to make laws for the regulation of our conduct with- 
out giving offense to Great Britain or any of the Ameri- 
can Colonies." The House was in session three days, 
during which nine bills were passed, and its business, con- 
ducted though it was in the open air, was transacted with 
all the dignity, regularity, and ability that marked the 
Colonial legislatures of the time. The laborers employed 
by Boone to cut the first regular road to Kentucky were 
of the usual woodchopping type, but the men who par- 
ticipated in the effort to establish the Transylvania gov- 
ernment distinguished it with a moral and intellectual force 
that utterly refuted the published assertions of Martin and 
Dunmore. A striking incident of Saturday, the last day 
of the session, was the formal and public observance before 
the House of the ancient feudal ceremony, "Livery of 
Seisin,"' the final act in the transfer of the immense 
portion of the territory sold by the Cherokees to Hender- 
son and Company. Standing under the great elm, the 
attorney employed by the Indians, John Farrar, handed 
to Judge Henderson a piece of the luxuriant turf cut from 
the soil that extended beneath them, and, while they both 
held it, Farrar declared his delivery of seisin and possession 
of the land, according to the terms of the title deed which 

' House Jourual, Appeadix ; Butler in Western Journal. 



30 Bo ones borough 

Henderson displayed, and the immediate reading of which 
completed a legal requirement now long since obsolete and 
almost forgotten. The session closed with the execu- 
tion of its most important feature, the signing of a com- 
pact between the Proprietors and the People,' which, crude 
as it is, takes historical precedence as the constitution of 
the first representative government ever attempted west 
of the Alleghany Mountains. 

The House adjourned, but the delegates met once more 
before they dispersed, for, the next day being Sunday, 
the entire settlement assembled under the grand old elm, 
where "divine service for the first time" in Kentucky was 
performed by Reverend John Lythe,' of the Church of 
England, a minister from Virginia and a member of the 
delegation from Harrodsburg. It was a religious event 
absolutely unique. Most of the usual accessories of the 
service were wanting, from echoing church bell and ' ' long 
drawn aisle " to pealing organ. No woman was there to 
join in litany or hymn, no child to lisp "amen." Only 
men were present — Dissenters as well as Episcopalians — 
for common dangers had drawn them together, and this 
one chance for public worship was eagerly seized by 

' House Journal, Appendix. 

^ Henderson, who spelt proper names to suit himself, gives this one in 
his journal as " Lyth," but in the proceedings of the Convention it is 
spelt as above. 



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Boonesborough 3^ 

pioneers who were as strong in simple faith as stout in 
heart, for there were others in the Colony of Transylvania 
besides the reckless few among the woodmen from Pow- 
ell's Valley. And so, cut off from the whole civilized 
world, the forerunners of a mighty West of many States 
knelt together in the sweet white clover, under that 
magnificent tree, the sole cathedral in a wilderness as vast 
and as solitary as the illimitable ocean. This was the first 
and last time that prayers were ever publicly recited on 
Kentucky soil for the King and royal family of England.' 
In less than a week the news, so long on the road, of the 
battle of Lexington ' threw the settlements into a fever of 
excitement, and minister and people not only sided at once 
with ' ' the rebels, " but the pastor, hke some he had preached 
to under the elm, ultimately sealed his devotion to liberty 
with his blood. 2 The Transylvanians would have been 
even more excited if they had known that Governor 
Martin, who had proclaimed them outlaws, had fled from 

'The very next spring the Virginia Convention expunged from the 
liturgy the words relating to the royal family. 

^ The news was a little more than six weeks getting to Boonesborougb, 
and did not reach the site of Lexington (Kentucky) until the 5th of June. 
(See page 19, History of Lexington, Kentucky.) 

' John Lythe was with the Virginia Militia, presumably as Chaplain, 
in the campaign of the next year against the Cherokees, and certainly 
served in that capacity with the Virginia troops in 1777. (See Payments 
of Militia in Virginia Records.) According to Morehead, Lythe was killed 
by the Indians. 



32 Boonesborough 

his "palace"' while their legislature was in session, and 
that, while they were responding to the slogan of the 
Revolution, Lord Dunmore also was preparing to fly to a 
British vessel.' 

On the 8th of June, a few days after the arrival of 
the great news, the notorious Dr. John F. D. Smythe 
rode into Boonesborough. He said he was touring the 
Colonies for material for a book of travels, which he did 
pubhsh after the Revolution,^ but the wily Scotchman 
kept religiously to himself the rather dangerous fact that 
he was also a spying emissary of Lord Dunmore to aid in 
uniting the Indians and frontier Tories in a scheme to 
sweep Virginia and her Kentucky territory clean of 
"rebels." It was skimpy times at the executive cabin 
just then, for bread was not to be had, and the salt was 
expected every day to give out. Even ' ' big " meat was 
none too easy to get, but Judge Henderson's black Dan 
managed to keep a supply, and with some vegetables 
from the fort garden, ' ' cats " from the river, and milk 
punches — for "the capital" was not without cows — the 
plotting guest was entertained. Smythe had his own 
reasons for enduring pioneer fare for several weeks, for 

' Volume X, Colonial Records of North Carolina. 
^ He escaped to the Fowey June 8, 1775. 
3 In London in 1784. 



Boonesborotigh 33 

during this time he openly and very innocently visited the 
Shawanese and other Ohio Indians, all then at peace 
with the whites. He doubtless made a diagram of "the 
works " at Boonesborough. In his notes, which the unsus- 
pecting settlers did not get a chance to see, he mentions 
Henderson as "a man of vast and enterprising genius, 
but void of military talents," and says, in the disgust of 
his loyal soul at the outrageous independence of the 
Transylvanians, ' ' such is the insolence, folly, and ridiculous 
pride of these ignorant backwoodsmen that they would 
conceive it an indelible disgrace and infamy to be styled 
servants even of His Majesty." The doctor was still 
more disgusted before he left the country, for shortly 
after this he barely escaped being tarred and feathered 
in a Virginia town, and later on was arrested, imprisoned, 
and the plan nipped in the bud. 

Early in this same month of June, while the American 
troops were girding themselves for the approaching con- 
test at Bunker Hill, every thing was quiet enough in the 
Kentucky wilderness, and Boone, who wanted to bring 
out his wife and children to Boonesborough, was con- 
cerned to have them safely lodged, and again urged his 
men, as he had often done before, to complete their little 
log shelter in the hollow. This time he was successful, 
and the cabins which, though they required no great 

6 



34 Boonesborough 

attention, had been so long neglected, were easily finished.' 
They seem never to have been used except for residence 
and domestic purposes. 

It was about this time, too, that reports of Dunmore's 
efforts to inflame the Indians began to reach and arouse 
Boonesborough, and it is probable that Henderson and 
Boone seized the chance to impel the self-confident 
woodsmen to further defensive exertions, for the ' ' big 
fort" on the rise overlooking the Lick was then almost 
but not entirely completed, much to the satisfaction 
of the resident proprietors, who had been exceedingly 
uneasy over their unprotected condition.^ This was the 

' It is the usual thing for writers of Western history to confuse these 
little defensive cabins commenced in "the hollow" on the ist of April 
with the fort begun by Henderson on the the 2 2d of the same month, 
though they were so different in location and importance. Even so late 
a writer as Roosevelt makes the two defenses identical, as Marshall did. 
The mistake dates from 17S4, when Filson wrote his valuable but high- 
flown account of Boone, in which he fails to distinguish between the two, 
and makes the plain old hunter speak of the cabins begun April ist as 
"works," and has him "busily employed" on them until the 14th of June. 
Filson wrote nine years after the event. Henderson, in his journal and 
in his letters written on the ground, says the log affair in the hollow was 
" a small fort," and that it was persistently neglected in spite of repeated 
efforts of both himself and Boone to get the men to finish it. The large 
fort completed later on was the only one that could aspire to such a title 
as "works," or that men would be "busily employed" on for weeks. 
Writers followed Filson without investigation, and hence the perpetuation 
of the error. (See Boone's Narrative, Henderson's letter of June 12, 
1775, William Cocke, etc.) 

^Henderson's letter of June 12, 1775, Appendix X, and letter of July 
18, 1775, to the Company. (See Frankfort Commonwealth, May 26, 1840.) 




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Boojiesborough 35 

only real fortification Boonesborough ever had, and the 
only one that figured in the Revolution. Fortunately, a 
plan of this celebrated station, drawn by Judge Henderson 
himself, was preserved," and other information about it 
from some of its actual defenders is still extant. "In the 
summer of 1775 it consisted of twenty-six one-story log 
cabins and four block-houses, arranged after the usual 
pioneer style, in a hollow square estimated as two hundred 
and sixty feet long and one hundred and eighty feet broad.* 
The block-houses, with their projecting second stories, 
formed the angles or bastions of the fort, and the roofs of the 
cabins, which were shed-shaped, sloped inwardly. Spaces 
between the block-houses and the cabins nearest them were 
intended to be stockaded, but as pickets were the least 
needed features of the fort in time of peace, it is probable 
that these were the parts neglected at this time, which 
afterward had to be supplied to " finish the fort. " ^ Both 
cabins and stockades were provided with little portholes 
for the rifies. The back of the station, so to speak, or 
back row of cabins comprising one of its longest sides, was 
substantially parallel with the river," though one of the 
angles on the river was nearer the bank than the other, 

'Copied by James Hall in 1835. 
'Estimated by Hall from original documents. 
'John Floyd's letter of July 21, 1776. 
" Henderson and Draper manuscripts. 



36 Boones borough 

while the front commanded the open space in the hollow 
below the fort, in which were the lick and the two springs. 
There were two gates — generally forgotten except in time 
of danger — one in the front and the other in the back wall 
facing the river. At Boonesborough, as at nearly all 
the pioneer stations in Kentucky, no provision whatever 
was made to insure a supply of drinking-water inside the 
stockade, plain as was the danger of the garrison being 
cut off from the springs in case of siege. All the cabins 
of the fort were not continuously occupied, for some of the 
settlers lived on their variously-located lands nearby, and 
some even had farms across the river ; but the cabins were 
often filled by newly - arrived immigrants, and all were 
crowded to overflowing whenever an Indian alarm was 
given. Then all the settlers in the neighborhood rushed 
in. It is certain, however, that in 1775 Judge Hen- 
derson lived in the block-house in the angle nearest 
the river ;' that he used for his kitchen the nearest cabin 
to him in the back row, and that old Dan, his 
negro cook, presided over it." Colonel Nat. Hart's quar- 
ters were nominally in the other angle near the river, but 
really with Colonel Callaway, it is believed, in one of the 
cabins in the hollow,^ when not at his White Oak clear- 

' Diagram of the fort and Draper manuscripts. 
"Diagram of the fort and Nat. Hart, junior's, notes. 



B oonesborough n 

ing, which he had already made about a mile above the 
fort. Luttrell's house was in the corner to the right of 
the front gate, and the angle that overlooked the lick 
was subsequently inhabited by John Williams, the Com- 
pany's Agent. The cabins of Floyd and others have not 
been located, but ' ' the store " is supposed to have formed 
part of the end of the station adjoining " the block-house," 
as Judge Henderson's rough residence was curiously called, 
considering that there were three other block-houses. 

Tovirard the middle of June Captain Cocke left Boones- 
borough for Black's Fort (Abingdon), to which his wife 
had returned, under the impression from his long absence 
that he was dead. On the way — following a gentle habit 
that had been observed in most of the colonies — he 
scalped an Indian ' who had been killed and overlooked 
by some immigrants after the savage and his party had 
attacked them in Powell's Valley. It was not long after 
this that he commenced a career that became distin- 
guished." 

/On the 13th of June, after superintending the work 
on the fort, Boone set out for his family, which was still 

' Henderson and Luttrell. (See Frankfort Commonwealth, May 26, 
1840.) 

'He figured gallantly the very next summer as an officer in the victory 
over the Cherokees at Long Island of the Holston, and ultimately became 
one of the first United States Senators from Tennessee. He died August 
22, 1828, at Columbus, Mississippi, and was there buried. 



38 Boonesborough 

at Snoddy's Station, ' the stockaded home of his comrade, 
John Snoddy, located on the margin of the Chnch River, 
on the site of the present town of Castlevvood, Russell 
County, Virginia. His old neighbor, Richard Callaway, 
went along with him for a like purpose, his family, too, 
being in a frontier fort of Virgmia at this time.^ 'jThey 
had the company, as far as Powell's Valley, of Thomas 
Hart, who was en route to North Carolina. With Boone 
was a detail of men engaged to bring back the salt ^ 
which had been left behind at Martin's cabin by Hender- 
son when the wagons were abandoned there. When the 
party set out Boonesborough was on the eve of a salt 
famine, which was in full force by the middle of the 
succeeding month, increasing the scarcity of provisions 
through the extreme difficulty of preserving wild meat, 
and especially big game, which now had to be brought 

'The exact location of Boone's family "on Clinch" at this period is 
now given for the first time, thanks to Judge W. B. Wood, of Bristol, 
Virginia, who obtained the information from T. W. Carter, of Scott 
County, Virginia, a descendant of Samuel Porter, who was with Boone 
in 1773 when driven back by the Indians from Wallen's Gap. (See 
Appendix.) Castlewood has a population of about five hundred, and the 
Clinch Valley Division of the Norfolk & Western Railroad runs through 
the place. 

^ Callaway evidently moved from Virginia to the Yadkin region of 
North Carolina after the French and Indian War, but returned to Virginia 
just before the Revolution. 

3 The salt had, doubtless, been originally secured from the primitive 
works then existing on the North Fork of the Holston, at the place now 
known as Saltville, Smyth County, Virginia. 



Boonesborough 39 

in from quite a distance through the heat. The men, 
after securing the salt, evidently waited in Powell's Valley 
for Boone to arrive there on his return from Snoddy's, 
for Henderson dolefully says, in his letter of July i8th: 
"Our salt is exhausted, and the men who went with 
Colonel Boone for that article have not returned, and 
until he comes the devil could not drive the others this 
way." Tradition says that before the party got back the 
distressed settlers exerted themselves to the utmost to 
make salt from the sulphur water in the hollow, but the 
results were too small to encourage any repetition of the 
experiment. Henderson and Luttrell were both anxious 
to make a visit to North Carolina, where pressing bus- 
iness demanded their presence, but delayed their start 
until assured that Boone was well advanced on his return 
trip and would soon be back. They seem to have left 
about the latter part of August. Henderson hardly 
dreamed when he set out from the proprietary capital 
that fateful circumstances would make his absence from 
it one of years, nor did Luttrell imagine that he would 
see it no more forever.' When Boone started back to 

' He was ultimately swept into the Revolution, was active against the 
Tories, and met death at their hands. He was shot through the body at 
Cane Creek, North Carolina, September 14, 1781. in an engagement with 
the notorious David Fanning, the Tory partisan leader, and died the fol- 
lowing day. (Draper.) Colonel Luttrell was a native of Westmoreland 
County, Virginia. He left a widow, but no children. 



40 BoonesboroiLgh 

Kentucky he was joined, not only by the salt men, but 
by quite a number of immigrants, including several fam- 
ilies from North Carolina, that of the reckless Hugh 
McGary being one, who were bound for Harrod's Sta- 
tion. When these families left the company at "the 
hazel patch, " ' in the present Laurel County, Kentucky, 
for their new home, about thirty persons were still left 
in Boone's party, which, with its cattle and dogs, its pack- 
horses loaded with the precious salt, provisions, and house- 
hold "traps," arrived on the 8th of September at delighted 
and excited Boonesborough, which turned out en masse 
to welcome it. Boone's was the only family ^ in the party, 
and his wife and grown daughter, Jemima, were not 
only the first white women to set foot upon the mar- 
gin of the picturesque Kentucky, ^ but they remained 
for nearly three weeks the only women there. The 
Boones immediately occupied a cabin in the hollow, but 
soon exchanged it for better quarters in ' ' the big fort, " 
and the influence of sunbonnets, though there was but a 
solitary couple of them, was soon seen\\ The men, and 

' Hazel Patch is eight miles north of London, Kentucky. 

^ This party is said to have consisted of Boone, his wife and children, 
and twenty-one men, and as — according to Peck — Boone had eight chil- 
dren, not including the son killed two years before at Wallen's Gap, the 
above estimate is substantially correct. 

' Boone to Filson. The other families mentioned reached their desti- 
nation the same day the Boones arrived at theirs, but Harrodsburg is on 
Salt River, which runs within a mile of the town. 



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Boonesborough \\ 

especially the younger ones, immediately improved in 
appearance, for there was a sudden craze for shaving and 
hair-cutting. An ash-hopper, soap kettle, and clothes 
line were set up. Hickory brooms and home-made wash- 
boards multiplied. The sound of the spinning-wheel was 
heard in the land, and an occasional sight could be had 
of a little looking-glass, a patch-work quilt, knitting- 
needles, and a turkey-tail fan. VCut off entirely from the 
companionship of females of their own race, great was the 
relief of Mrs. Boone and Miss Jemima when on the 26th 
of the month (September) Colonel Callaway returned with 
his family and a party which included William Pogue and 
Barney Stagner and their families, adding three matrons 
and several young women to the social life of the station. // 
Pogue, being "an ingenius contriver," blessed the settle- 
ment by making piggins and noggins, washtubs and churns, 
and provisions were more plentiful now that there was 
salt to preserve the game, and the fields for the first 
time brought forth their increase. Times were better at 
Boonesborough. 

The Transylvania Legislature did not convene at 
Boonesborough- this September according to adjournment. 
The spread of revolutionary sentiments was not confined 
to the seaboard, and before the summer of 1775 had 
ended the idea of a proprietary government had become 

7 



42 Boonesborotigh 

obnoxious to the Kentucky settlers. But a meeting of a 
majority of the Company's members was held on the 
twenty-fifth of the month ' at the little town of Oxford, 
Granville County, North Carolina, about which several of 
them resided, and immediately steps were taken to secure 
the recognition of Transylvania as the fourteenth mexnber 
of the United Colonies by the adoption of a memorial to 
the Continental Congress, then in session at Philadelphia, 
and the election of James Hogg as a delegate to that 
body. Mr. Hogg reached Philadelphia on the 2 2d of 
October, and, though not received as a delegate, he 
labored faithfully among the great spirits of that great 
assembly, and one of them, Silas Deane, thought so 
seriously of the new colony as to draw up a paper (which 
is herewith appended)^ to aid in the proper shaping of its 
economy and government, but advised him to sound the 
Virginia delegates, ' ' as the}' would not chuse to do any 
thing in it without their consent." Other Connecticut 
men besides Mr. Deane were thinking of Transylvania at 
this time, but in a different way. The prospect of secur- 
ing generous slices of its rich domain at a trifling cost 
was so enticing to his constituents that two thousand of 
them, it is said, were considering the matter of settling 

'See Proceedings of Meeting, Appendix O. 
° Appendix P. 



Boonesborotigh 43 

there.' Of the Virginia members of the Congress, Thomas 
Jefferson said it was his wish to see a free government 
estabhshed back of theirs, "but would consent to no 
congressional acknowledgment of the colony until it was 
approved by the Virginia Convention" ; so to that conven- 
tion the matter went. It is plain that none of the Con- 
gressmen that Hogg consulted countenanced a proprietary 
government. In what Hogg styles "an account of my 
embassy,"* he says, "You would be amazed to see how 
much in earnest all these speculative gentlemen are about 
the plan to be adopted by the Transylvanians. They 
entreat, they pray that we may make it a free govern- 
ment, and beg that no mercenary or ambitious views in 
the proprietors may prevent it. Quit rents, they say, is a 
mark of vassalage, and hope they shall not be established 
in Transylvania. They even threaten us with their oppo- 
sition if we do not act upon liberal principles." In this 
same report to Judge Henderson, Mr. Hogg significantly 
adds, "Enclosed I send you a copy of a sketch by John 
Adams, 3 which I had from Richard Henry Lee." In this 

'Letter of Governor Martin, of North Carolina, November 12, 1775, to 
Lord Dorchester, in Canadian Archives for 1890, pages 103-156. 

^ Appendix Q. 

3 This sketch was in the shape of a letter to George Wythe, of Virginia, 
and was entitled, "Thoughts on Government Applicable to the Present 
State of the American Colonies." At this time "there was much discus- 
sion," says Mr. Adams, "concerning the necessity of independence, and the 



44 Boonesborough 

document Mr. Adams, like Jefiferson and Deane, urged 
the adoption of full and complete republican constitutions 
by all the colonies. It must have been plain to Hender- 
son and Company, even six or eight months before the 
Declaration of Independence, that the prospects of an 
American colony with a proprietary form of government 
were not encouraging. 

At the before - mentioned September meeting of the 
Proprietors they advanced the price of land in Transyl- 
vania from twenty shillings to fifty shillings per hundred 
acres, which had much to do with raising a storm that 
was already threatened. 

On the first of December John Williams, uncle of 
Judge Henderson and recently elected general agent of the 
colony, arrived at Boonesborough, accompanied by some 
immigrants, and opened a land office. John Floyd, who 
had returned from a trip made in the summer, was 
appointed surveyor, Nathaniel Henderson entry officer, 
and Richard Harrison secretary. Williams soon found 

several States were advised to institute governments for themselves under 
the immediate authority and original power of the people." But the con- 
templated transition from a royal to a republican form of government 
presented difficulties. The important question was how to overcome these 
difficulties, and Mr. Wythe, in seeking more light upon it, requested Mr. 
Adams "to advise a plan for a colony to pursue in order to get out of 
the old government and into the new." This essay was in answer to that 
request. It can be found on page 189 of Volume IV of Life and Works 
of John Adams, by Charles Francis Adams, 



Boonesborough 45 

that the rise in the price of the land was causing great 
dissatisfaction to the Transylvanians, which some of them 
at Harrodsburg soon exhibited in a formal remonstrance 
delivered to him by a special committee. His reply' was 
not satisfactory, and the trouble grew. 

On the 23d of this month Boonesborough was 
amazed as well as exasperated by an Indian outrage,' for 
the Western savages were still neutral in the Revolutionary 
struggle. On that day two boys, McQuinney and San- 
ders, left the place without their rifies — a common thing 
with the long undisturbed settlers — crossed the river, 
climbed the hills opposite the fort, and fell into the 
hands of some lurking Shawanese, who fired on another 
member of the garrison who was also on that side. At 
first it was feared that quite a body of Indians had arrived, 
and, as the boys did not return, great anxiety was added 
to alarm, but on the 27th McQuinney, killed and 
scalped, was discovered in a cornfield about three miles 
north of the river, and it was evident that his slayers 
had decamped. A party of rangers under Jesse Benton,' 
father of the afterward famous Thomas H. Benton, 
scoured the woods with an offer of the Colony before 
their eyes of ^5 for the scalp of each of the fleeing 

' Appendix R. 

^Williams' Report of January 3, 1776, Appendix S. 

' Transylvania Company's books. 



46 Boonesborough 

murderers, but no such gruesome trophy was secured, and 
Sanders, killed or a prisoner, never returned. It was 
soon learned that there were only about a half-dozen of 
the Shawanese, and that they were the unauthorized 
marauders alluded to by Cornstalk at the October con- 
ference at Fort Pitt between the American commissioners 
and the chiefs of the Western tribes. That noble Indian 
gentleman informed the commissioners that such a party 
had left for Kentucky just before the conference ; that he 
could not be responsible for them, and that if any of 
them got killed he would take no notice of it whatever.' 
The settlers were relieved to know that the outrage was 
not yet the beginning of Indian hostilities, but all the 
same the first Christmas at Boonesborough was one of 
grief, anxiety, and tears. 

The New Year, 1776, opened peacefully enough at the 
station, business at the "land office" went on,' and the 
spring was uneventful, but immigration was checked by 
the tragedy just related, unauthorized though it was, and 
by fears for the future. The English and the Americans 
were both working for an Indian alliance, but it was evident 
already that the savages, as usual, would side with the 
strongest, and the outlook was gloomy for the pioneers. 

"Williams' letter. 

' See Appendix T for specimen of the Company's land survey warrant. 



Boonesborougk 47 

In May a petition' embodyinc; the substance of the 
December remonstrance was received by the Virginia 
Convention from "the inhabitants and some of settlers 
of that part of North America now denominated Tran- 
sylvania." It was the last time that Transylvania was 
formally recognized as the name of the colony. Hen- 
derson, who was at Williamsburg watching the interests 
of the Company, filed an answering petition,^ and feeling 
waxed hotter ni the Kentucky wilderness. The rise in 
the price of its land, the uncertainty of its title, and its 
feudal features were not the only objections to the Pro- 
prietary government. It was not countenanced by any 
of the old colonies, and had no organized militia, and 
these deficiencies grew suddenly momentous when a warn- 
ing came to the settlers from friendly Indians that some 
of the Western tribes were leaguing against the Long 
Knives. The people realized at once the importance of 
an open and decided recognition of their territory as a 
part of Virginia ; steps were taken to effect this, and an 
eight-day election held at Harrodsburg, and commencing 
June 6th, resulted in the choice of two representatives, 
George Rogers Clark and John Gabriel Jones, from "West 
Fincastle, " as the colony was newly called, to the Con- 

' Appendix U. This petition to the Convention (not to the Assembly, 
as some authors have it) was received May i8, 1776. 
'Filed June 15th. See Journal Virginia Convention. 



48 Boonesborough 

vention of Virginia, and of an Executive Committee to 
voice the wishes of the people, which was done on the 
2oth of the month by the adoption of a petition ' to 
the Convention, which in its own unique way prays for 
the incorporation of West Fincastle as a county of Vir- 
ginia. This was not what the high-spirited and adven- 
turous Clark was after, but the people had settled the 
matter and he acquiesced. He declares in his Memoirs : ' 
"I wanted deputies elected at Harrodsburg to treat with 
the Virginia Assembly. If valuable considerations were 
procured we would declare ourselves citizens of the State, 
otherwise we would establish an independent government." 
The Convention adjourned before these proceedings could 
be submitted to it, but not before it had made provision 
to accurately determine Virginia's chartered interests in 
the Kentucky territory, and for an inquiry into alleged 
illegal purchases from the Indians, ^ both of which were 
ominous for the Transylvania Company, and brought from 
it a warning proclamation as to settlement on disputed 
lands." 

' Appendix V. 

'Dillon's Indiana, Volume I, page 128. 

'See journal of Virginia Convention, pages 63 and 83, for resolution 
adopted June 24, 1776, against purchase of land from the Indians without 
authority from the State, and for act of July 3, 1776, appointing Com- 
missioners to examine into such illegal purchases. 

■* See Appendix W. 



Boonesborough 49 

The summary action at Harrodsburg against the Pro- 
prietary government made but little stir in a region that 
was by this time constantly exercised about threatened 
Indian hostilities, and from which many an apprehensive 
soul had already departed. The tribes still claimed to be 
friends of the "Long Knives," but all the same Indian 
"signs "and alarming rumors increased, and early in July 
the significant fact was noted that several of the men who 
had left the settlement on hunting trips had never returned. 
Boonesborough was anxious, but more than six quiet 
months had elapsed since the murder of McQuinney, and 
no enemy had threatened the station yet. 

It was as quiet as ever on the afternoon of Sunday, 
July 14th, and the customary Bible reading was over, 
when Elizabeth and Frances Callaway, daughters of Rich- 
ard Callaway, and Jemima Boone," daughter of Daniel 
Boone, started in one of the rough canoes of the settle- 
ment to visit a family located on the other side of the 
river, and only a short distance from Boonesborough. 
They had crossed and were only a few yards from a land- 
ing when the canoe struck a little sandbar nearly opposite 
a spot on the shore which tradition says is the same now 
known as ' ' The Four Sycamores, " from the four trees 

'Boone's Narrative and W. B. Smith. Floyd's letter of July 21, 1776. 
See extract, Appendix X. 



50 Boonesborough 

of that kind which afterward grew there, and which still 
designate the place. And here, when neither the faintest 
sight nor sound had intimated the presence of an enemy, 
the little boat was suddenly seized by five Indians — four 
Shawanese and one Cherokee — who darted from the thick 
cane that bordered the river. The eldest of the girls, 
"Miss Betsey," though startled and terrified, instinct- 
ively dealt one of the savages a blow on the head with 
a paddle, while her younger companions, paralyzed with 
fear, covered their blanched faces with their hands. In 
a moment, while too breathless and bewildered to give 
an alarm, they were rushed through the shallow water to 
shore and then up a densely wooded ravine to the summit 
of the high and lonely hills that stretched along that side 
of the river. From there, made dumb by a threat of the 
tomahawk, they were marched in silence through streams 
and canebrakes and woods toward the ancient ' ' Warriors' 
Trace " that led to the Ohio. So cleverly had the savages 
managed that it was hours before the girls were missed — 
for it was not until milking time that the alarm was sounded 
by a hunter who had gone out to meet them. In the 
midst of the grief and excitement that ensued, and after 
exasperating delays, one band of riflemen under Daniel 
Boone and another under Colonel Callaway, comprising 
about twenty men in all, started in pursuit. This force 



B oonesborough 5^ 

included," besides the leaders, John Holder, Samuel Hen- 
derson, Flanders Callaway, William Bailey Smith, John 
Floyd, Nathaniel Hart, David Hart, Nathan Reid, John 
Gess, David Gess, and others, from Boonesborough ; 
and John Martin, John McMillan, and William Bush, who 
had recently built improvers' cabins across the river in 
easy distance from the fort. The outcome of this romantic 
incident is familiar to every reader of early Western his- 
tory. The savages were surprised, routed, and two of 
them killed as they halted three miles south of the Upper 
Blue Licks, the tattered, torn, and despairing girls were 
rescued unharmed, and, after a torrent of happy tears and 
exclamations, were caught up on horseback and brought 
back worn out but safe to the rejoicing settlement. 

But the event was a prophecy of evil. It was the 
beginning of days and years of trouble, and the rescuing 
party did not return a whit too soon. In fact, some mis- 
chief was done before they did return, for Indian stragglers 
went to Nathaniel Hart's clearing,^ burned his cabin, and 
ruined his young apple trees, while the force left behind 
was too small to punish them. The news brought in by 
scouts and messengers was plain enough. Small parties 
of hostile Shawanese were haunting all the stations. The 
Indians had dug up the hatchet. Such of the neighbor- 

' Names from John Floyd, John Bradford, and Draper manuscripts. 
" United States Historical Register. 



52 Boonesborough 

ing settlers, including those across the river, as had 
families brought them into the fort, which was now pro- 
vided with cumbersome but substantial gates, and all the 
open gaps in the walls were filled in either with more 
cabins or with sharpened posts that stood ten feet above 
the ground. "The works" were finished at last' accord- 
ing to the original plans, and now another panic set in. 
Numbers left the country. On the 20th the discouraged 
settlers of Hinkston's Station^ camped inside the stockade 
while en route to Virginia, and ten of the Boonesborough 
people went with them when they departed, leaving less 
than thirty riflemen to defend the place.' 

Fortunately the Indians made no formidable move- 
ment this year, and though murders and depredations by 
skulkers and petty bands were incessant, all was not dark 
among the undaunted holders of the wilderness forts. On 
the 7th of August, three weeks after the capture of the 
girls, there was a wedding in one of the cabins at Boones- 
borough, when Squire Boone, Baptist Elder as well as 
Indian fighter, officiated, and Elizabeth Callaway, the 
oldest of the heroines of that adventure, and Samuel 
Henderson, a brother of Judge Henderson, were made 

' Floyd's letter. 

° One of the earliest settlements in Central Kentucky, located in the 
present Harrison County, and afterward called "Ruddles." 
3 Floyd's letter. 



B oonesborough S3 

husband and wife.' At this, the first marriage that took 
place in Kentucky, there was dancing to fiddle-music by 
the light of tallow "dips," and legend says the guests 
were treated to home-grown watermelons, of which the 
whole station was proud. A few days later a returning 
settler brought in the first news of the Declaration of 
Independence and a copy of the Virginia Gazette con- 
taining the text of it. The immortal document was 
read out to the assembled garrison, was concluded amidst 
cheers and war-whoops, and was given the endorsement 
of a big bonfire that night. There were Sons of Liberty 
in the Kentucky wilderness as well as on the Seaboard, 
and some of them were right in Boonesborough at this 
time. 

In September the station lost two more officers of the 
Proprietary government, John Williams and John Floyd, 
who left for the old settlements in the interest of the 
jeopardized Company. Their plans were soon changed 
by the action of Virginia in the Transylvania matter. 
Williams returned to North Carolina, became one of her 
leading citizens,^ and saw the backwoods capital no more. 
Floyd, who was not destitute of love of adventure, 

'Alfred Henderson to R. H. Collins. 

^Williams was elected judge the next year, 1777, and was afterward a 
member of Congress. He died in October, 1799, on his farm a mile west 
of Williamsboro, in what is now Vance County, North Carolina, and was 
buried on the place. 



54 Boonesborough 

embarked in the Revolution as a privateersman. ' Isaac 
Shelby acted as surveyor for a short time at Boones- 
borough in his place, but the uncertain fare with its lack 
of salt injured his health, and he, too, departed.' 

During the first session of the newly created State 
Legislature of Virginia, which began at Williamsburg in 
October, Henderson and his colleagues fought hard and 
long for the recognition of the claims of their Company,^ 
but the battle ended in the assumption by the Common- 
wealth itself of jurisdiction over the disputed territory. On 
the 7th of December an act was passed creating the county 
of Kentucky out of the domain which was destined to be 
rechristened the State of Kentucky, and the new county 
included the Henderson purchase. The Proprietary 
government of Transylvania now ceased to exist, and 
Boonesborough suddenly found herself figuring unequivo- 
cally as a wilderness settlement of the extremest western 
county of the State of Virginia. The splendid and prom- 
ising scheme of the Transylvania Company to possess an 
empire of territory and garner the magnificent revenues 

' Floyd was captured by the British, and after an imprisonment of 
about a year returned to Kentucky. 

'Wheeler's History of North Carolina. 

'See Appendix T for deposition of Charles Robertson, a sample of the 
evidence taken by the Commissioners appointed by the Convention to 
investigate the purchase from the Cherokees. (Volume II, Cal. Virginia 
State papers. 



Boonesborough 55 

it was to yield ended in a struggle for mere compensa- 
tion for the expenses, labor, and trouble incurred in the 
enterprise. Much of the documentary history of that 
struggle is herewith appended.' Certain features of the 
Company's plan of government deserved the condemna- 
tion they received, but for the great work it did in open- 
ing up a continuous path to the banks of the Kentucky, 
in planting the strongest early barrier against the Indi- 
ans, inspiring the desperate people with hope, and 
insuring the permanent occupation of the soil, it fully 
merited all the compensation it received, and will ever 
hold a prominent place in the history of the Common- 
wealth. And such a place will certainly be held by the 
master spirit of the Company, Richard Henderson, one 
of the ablest and boldest of the American colonizers of 
his day. The name of Transylvania was stricken from 
the map of "the country on the western waters," but his 
own name is justly perpetuated by one of the most fertile 
counties^ of the Commonwealth he unwittingly but power- 
fully helped to plant. Henderson's brilliant hopes were 

' See sundry documents in Appendix, including above deposition. 

^It was mainly through Henderson's exertion that Virginia, in Decem- 
ber, 1778, granted the Company by way of compensation two hundred 
thousand acres of land in Kentucky below the mouth of Green River. 
The present city and county of Henderson are on this tract, where Will- 
iam Bailey Smith and heirs of Luttrell, Hogg, and other associates of 
Henderson finally settled. 



56 BoonesboroMgh 

blasted, but the future proved him undaunted. He was 
to visit Boonesborough once more.' 

On the ist of January, 1777, about half a dozen 
refugees from McClelland's fort (Georgetown) reached 
Boonesborough, which meant that the Indians, contrary to 
their usual custom, had been active in the winter, and 
that the last station north of the Kentucky River had 
been abandoned. Early in March, just after Boone had 
been regularly appointed to the command of the fort, 
and before the feeble militia of Kentucky County had 
been organized a week, a number of Shawanese were 
lurking unseen about Boonesborough. They were under 
the distinguished Black Fish, who was to be heard of in 
this locahty again. Some one else was hiding near the 
fort at this time. It was Simon Kenton, known then by 
his assumed name of "Simon Butler," who was waiting 
for a chance to warn its inmates of their danger. But the 
stalwart adventurer, then only twenty-one but six feet 
tall, already understood Indians too well to attempt to 
enter the station in the daytime. He got safely in at 
nightfall, but not in time to avert a tragedy, for two of 
the garrison who had not waited for the darkness, as he 
had, were wa3'laid and killed as they openly went toward 
the stockade.^ Incursions of small parties of the enemy 

' See infra. 
' Collins. 



Boo7ies borough 57 

now constantly occurred, and Kenton and Thomas Brooks, 
who were appointed by Boone as special scouts, had a 
perilous task, and a bigger one than two men could 
always perform. 

The first time "the big fort" was actually attacked 
was about sunrise on the 24th of April,' while the scouts 
were in. The Indians, numbering from fifty to a hun- 
dred,' arrived without their advance being either sus- 
pected or announced, and the station, with its poor little 
force of twenty- two riflemen, ' barely escaped capture. 
During a successful maneuver to draw out the garrison an 
Indian tomahawked and scalped Daniel Goodman, when 
Kenton, who was at the fort gate with his loaded gun, 
killed the exulting savage. The garrison, in pursuing the 
apparently retreating enemy, was cut off from the fort and 
only regained it after a desperate fight, in which Boone, 
Isaac Hite, John Todd, and Michael Stoner * were wounded 
and a number of Indians killed — three of them, it is said, 
by Kenton alone. It was on this occasion that Kenton 
saved the life of Boone, carried him into the fort, and 
was knighted in backwoods fashion when his leader, of 

'Boone says April 15th in his Narrative, dictated seven years after 
the event. We accept the date given in Clark's journal, as it was written 
at the time. 

'Boone says "above a hundred;" Clark says "from forty to fifty." 

^ Boone. 

* Clark's journal. 

9 



58 Boonesborough 

few words and fewer compliments, called Kenton "a fine 
fellow." After the failure of their familiar stratagem the 
Indians, who were never prepared for a protracted siege, 
retreated, carrying their dead off with them. Threatened 
as Boonesborough now continually was, her defenders, true 
to the pioneer trait that more than once brought disaster, 
would risk much to gratify their love of adventure. One 
day in June Captain William Bailey Smith started after 
some retiring marauders with a force that left the station 
almost unprotected. The riflemen ventured clear to the 
Ohio River, killed one of the Indians, and in returning 
had the gratification of surprising and scattering another 
party. Fortunately the fort was not attacked in their 
absence, and they got back uninjured except John Martin, 
a scout, who was wounded." 

About two weeks after this the Indians made another 
and more serious attempt than the April one to capture 
Boonesborough. After a swift descent to the Kentucky 
they sent detachments to threaten the other stations and 
prevent the march of reinforcements, and early on the 
morning of the Fourth of July they suddenly encompassed 
the fort with two hundred warriors,' who swarmed up from 
the river bank and hid themselves in the now deserted 
hollow, and behind trees and stumps, and in such patches 

' Bradford. 

' Boone's Narrative. 



Boonesborough 59 

of corn as their predecessors had spared. But this 
time the scouts had warned the garrison, and there was 
not only no surprise, but no rushing out after retreating 
decoy parties. For two days and two nights the savages, 
by their persistent firing and repeated attempts to burn 
the fort, ' kept the handful of men in the station incessantly 
employed while the weary and anxious women loaded the 
extra rifles, passed the precious water from the rain- 
barrels, distributed food, and attended to the horses, cows, 
and other live-stock that had been hastily gathered in. 
Failing in surprise and stratagem, the Indians left before 
sunrise on the 6th, carrying off — to hide away — seven 
dead comrades whose bodies had been seen and counted 
from the portholes by the garrison, which had one man 
killed and two wounded. As soon as the scouts reported 
the enemy as certainly gone the cumbersome gates of the 
fort were dragged open with a will, when the live-stock 
delightedly rushed out to the green grass and to the river, 
while the settlers as eagerly sought the cool, fresh water 
of the lick spring. A small party immediately set out to 
scour the country for wild meat, a mounted messenger 
was soon hurrying over Boone's Trace on his way to the 
old settlements to implore aid for the sorely tried and 
diminishing people, the wounded now were given full 

' Clark's journal and Marshall. 



6o Boonesborough 

attention, and there was a mournful burial in the grave- 
yard adjoining the station. 

Boonesborough was not besieged again this year, but 
life was made almost a burden to its inmates all the 
same, for Indians either as skulkers or in small bands 
haunted the locality until freezing weather. Pent up, 
stagnant, half-starved, exposed to sudden death whenever 
they ventured from the station, the settlers wearily waited 
for the relief they had sent for. It came at last on the 
25th of July,' when forty-five riflemen from North Caro- 
lina rode in among the wornout but rejoicing people. A 
week after these men were succeeded by a detachment 
from a force of a hundred Virginia militia, which Colonel 
John Bowman' brought to the aid of the county, and 
these in turn were replaced by a smaller body commanded 
by the adventurous pioneer. Captain John Montgomery. ^ 
While each of these militia reliefs, being under short 
enlistment, soon returned home, they were nevertheless 
such a strength and encouragement that the settlers were 
often enabled to take the offensive, while hunters were at 
least given a chance to seek big game, for ammunition 
was too scarce to use, except in cases of extreme neces- 
sity, on squirrels, rabbits, and birds. Often the danger 

' Boone. 

° Clark's Memoirs. 

3 From Botetourt County, Virginia. 



Boonesborough 6i 

was such that no game of any kind could be sought, and 
the sole dependence was such corn, potatoes, and turnips 
as could be raised so close to the station as to be almost 
under the rifle barrels of its defenders. Late in the fall 
pawpaws and wild grapes were a blessing, and big stores 
of walnuts and hickory nuts were laid in. Once the 
gunpowder was entirely exhausted, and the whole garrison 
got heartsick, when a little hoarded store was remembered 
of the brimstone and saltpetre that Henderson brought 
in. Some charcoal was made, and Boone and a couple 
of frontiersmen, who, like himself, had taken lessons from 
dire necessity, soon manufactured enough powder,' scant 
as that was, to tide the settlement over the emergency. 
But salt, almost as great a need as ammunition and to 
secure which the pioneers often risked captivity and 
death, was again distressingly low. The dwellers in the 
log cabins of Boonesborough always remembered the year 
1777 for its varied and long-continued trials. It was a 
year of sieges, minor engagements, and single combats, of 
tragedies, romantic adventures, and great suffering, but 
the men and women of Boonesborough were too busy 

' Gunpowder was manufactured several times at Boonesborough. A 
few months after this when Boone was a prisoner at Detroit he surprised 
Hamilton by making his own powder, and the fact did not encourage the 
governor as to the capabilities and resources of the Kentucky settlers. 
(Howe's Ohio, page 191.) 



62 Boonesborough 

struggling for existence to make more than a casual 
record of the events that crowded it, and what should 
have been one of the richest pages of pioneer history is 
a blank. But through it all the settlers listened with the 
keenest interest for every " echo of the Revolution that 
might penetrate the wilderness. About the middle of 
November they heard with exultation and renewed hope 
of the surrender of Burgoyne. That night a bonfire of dry 
cane was made in the center of the spacious stockade, 
where a crowd of rejoicing men, women, and children, 
singing negroes, and capering dogs was gathered. Every 
cabin door was open, and from each came the feeble light 
of a tallow dip or rude bear's oil lamp, or the brightness of 
blazing logs in a yawning fireplace. It was all that the 
patriotic but hard-pressed settlers could do in the way of 
celebrating, and they did that with the fort gates securely 
barred, with their horses and cattle all penned inside the 
pickets, and with scouts continually on the watch. 

Among the pioneer conveniences and features that had 
gradually accumulated at Boonesborough by this time 
were sheds for corn and fodder and for the storing of 
peltry, rough but indispensable hand-mills or mortars, 
stock troughs made from hollow logs, skins of wild ani- 
mals pegged to the palisades to be cured, hulled walnuts 
and hickory nuts spread out to dry, a bare but all-impor- 



Boonesdorougk 63 

tant blacksmith shop, the usual assortment of pack- 
saddles, ploughs made up with irons "brought through 
the wilderness " and of wood fashioned in the fort, and 
the home-made rain barrels fed by bark gutters from the 
cabin roofs, for neither well nor cistern had yet been 
made inside the log walls by the strangely negligent gar- 
rison, and the springs and the river were still the main 
dependence for water. Most of the cabins were provided 
with a slab table, either a feather bed or a buffalo one, 
hickory chairs with deerskin seats, iron pots, ovens, and 
skillets, and gourds, big and Httle, that were used for every 
thing, from dippers to egg baskets, and to hold every thing, 
from cornmeal and soft soap to maple sugar. Bucks' 
antlers and wooden pegs held rifles, powder-horns, and 
fishing-poles, sun-bonnets and saddle-bags, bundles of 
dried herbs, strings of red pepper, and "hands" of 
tobacco. A shelf over the fireplace was reserved for 
medicine, the whisky jug, tinder box, ink bottle, and quill 
pens, the Bible, almanac, and a few other books, which, 
in some cabins, included The Pilgrim's Progress and 
Shakespeare. 

Before December ended the stock of salt was exhausted 
at Boonesborough and the other stations also, and the 
slim rations of cornbread, turnips, and venison were not 
only insipid, but sickness was threatened. The long trip 



64 Boonesborough 

to the North Holston wells was not to be thought of, and, 
as the Indians seldom went on the warpath in midwinter, 
the pioneers determined to make their own salt at the 
ancient springs now known as the Blue Licks, to which 
the buflfaloes, ages before, had guided the red men as 
they afterward guided their pale-faced foes." A Captain 
Watkins arrived at Boonesborough about this time from 
Virginia with a few militia to aid in the defense of the 
county, and it was arranged for his force to alternate 
with another under Daniel Boone in making the desired 
salt,' and on the ist of January, 1778, Boone, with a 
party of thirty men made up from the three forts, started 
on a long, cold ride for the "Lower Salt Spring," with 
a few pack-horses carrying the crudest of manufacturing 
outfits in the shape of the largest iron kettles then in 
domestic use in the settlements, together with meal, fod- 
der, and axes. As for meat, they relied solely on their 
rifles for that. The work at the salt camp, which was 
slow and difficult ' enough, was made more so by the cold 

' One of the principal buffalo traces of the Kentucky wilds led to the 
Blue Licks, in what is now Nicholas County. 

^ McDonald's Kenton. 

' As from five hundred to eight hundred gallons of this water was 
required for a bushel of salt, one can fancy the time consumed in making 
even a moderate supply of it with such a makeshift as cooking kettles. 
One bushel of salt at this time was worth a cow and calf in barter, and 
no telling how much in depreciated Continental currency. It was sold by 
measure a half -bushel measure being used. Two bushels, with a few light 



Boonesboro^LgJi 65 

weather and the constant efforts to secure game, so that 
many days elapsed before any salt was sent back to the 
settlements, but it went at last on pack-horses and in 
charge of three of the men, who got through safely. The 
work had dragged on for five weeks, when, on the 7th of 
February, it was suddenly ended by a band of a little 
over a hundred Indians,' which included the Shawanese 
Chiefs Black Fish and Munseka, and two of Governor 
Hamilton's French employes, Lorimer and Charles Baubin. 
The weather was very severe, and Boone, who was several 
miles from camp hunting game for the men, and who 
was helpless from cold, was easily secured. He soon dis- 
covered that the object of the expedition was the capture 
of Boonesborough. To save the fort, which he was con- 
vinced could, under the circumstances, be taken, he pre- 
tended great loj'alty to the Crown, offered to prove it by 
the surrender of his men already surrounded, expressed 
deep regret that Boonesborough was too strongly gar- 
risoned for so small a body to expect any thing but defeat, 
and suggested its capture a little later by a larger force. 
The stratagem was a desperate one, but it succeeded.^ 

articles, was the usual load of a led pack-horse. For years after peace 
was declared there were extensive salt-works at both ' ' the Upper and the 
Lower Spring " on the Licking. 

' Haldimand manuscripts, April, 1778; Boone and Marshall. 

^Hamilton says in Haldimand manuscript: "The savages could not 
be prevailed upon to attempt the fort, which, by means of their prisoners, 
might have been easily done with success." 



66 Boonesborough 

Boone obtained good terms for his men, whose surrender 
the next day so convinced the Indians of his friendship and 
sincerity that the attempt on Boonesborough was aban- 
doned, and the greatly elated savages retired with their 
prisoners across the Ohio. Later on some of the captives 
were ransomed and some escaped, ' but a few were heard 
of no more. Boone was adopted as a son by Black Fish, 
who gave him the name of "Big Turtle, "^ and he seems 
to have been kept with the Shawanese during his entire 
captivity. The disaster was almost immediately discovered 
by Brooks 3 and another scout in advance of the Watkins 
force that had started to relieve the salt-makers. They 
found a deserted camp and so many significant Indian 
signs that they hastily gave warning to the advancing 
men, and all turned back with heavy hearts. This loss 
of twenty-seven men, including such a leader, out of so 
small a fighting force was by far the greatest calamity 
that had yet befallen the pioneers, and caused consterna- 
tion, grief, and discouragement at all the stations, and 
especially at Boonesborough. As days went by without 
bringing news from the ill-fated men the discouragement 
increased, and when spring had fairly opened and still no 

'One of them at least, Joseph Jacksou, it is known was still a pris- 
oner in the spring of 1780. 

^ Lossing, and Thwaits in Withers' Chronicles. 
3 McDonald's Kenton. 



■0 3 



B d 









O 



r 

o 
(/) 

o 

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a 
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z 

5 
r 

CO 

o 
o 
z 

w 




Boonesborough 67 

tidings came they were given up for dead, and Mrs. 
Boone and all of her immediate family except Jemima, 
who remained with the family of her uncle. Squire Boone, 
together with some of the relatives of the other missing 
settlers, loaded up their pack-horses and made their weary 
and dangerous way back to North Carolina. 

The veteran Indian fighter, Richard Calloway, was now 
the leading spirit at Boonesborough, and did his best to 
cheer up its inmates, but it was no easy task, for not 
only was Boone, their tower of strength, gone, but W. B. 
Smith was absent doing imaginary recruiting for Clark in 
Holston, the rollicking and adventurous "Butler"' was 
scouting for the same leader, and many old friends 
had gone back across the mountains. In addition to the 
pent-up and isolated life of the fort, which was hard 
enough of itself, skulking savages waylaid the hunters so 
persistently when they went for game that the people 
were at times reduced almost to starvation, and it was 
well indeed for the Kentucky settlements that an Indian 
army did not swoop down upon them during the gloomy 
spring of 1778. 

Summer commenced dolefully enough, enlivened only 
by the preparations of Clark at the Falls of the Ohio for 
the expedition to Kaskaskia. It was the first summer 

'He did not resume his real name — Kenton — until 1782. 



68 BoonesboroMgh 

that had opened yet at Boonesborough without Daniel 
Boone. But the great woodsman, though missed and 
duly mourned, was far from dead. For four months he 
had been forced to lead the wild and uncertain life of his 
self-constituted Shawanese kinsmen, who, in their varied 
wanderings, had carried him along to Detroit, headquarters 
of the British for the Northwest, on one of their trips to 
get rewards for scalps and to dispose of some of their 
prisoners. There he won the friendship of Governor 
Hamilton,' who tried to ransom him, and who treated 
him with a kindness and consideration that Boone, stead- 
fast and grateful, never forgot. But, unfortunately for 
Boone, the Indians were too much charmed with him to 
let him go at any price, and when they turned their faces 
again toward the Ohio country he knew his only hope was 
in the desperate chance of escape. But the chance did 
not come, and the beginning of summer found him appar- 
ently contented but exceedingly watchful and patiently 
boiling salt for the Black Fish family at a secret spring^ 
a few miles from the favorite old Indian haunt, Chilli- 
cothe.3 It was to this familiar region that the fighting 
force of the Shawanese returned on the 15th of June, 
exasperated over an unsuccessful foray against Donelly's 

' Boone's Nar. Peck et al. 

°Said to be located in the present Fayette County, Ohio. 

3 Old Chillicothe. 



Boonesborough 69 

Fort,' on the Greenbrier River, and determined to avenge 
its insulted dignity by an immediate surprise and capture 
of Boonesborough. Keenly observant as he was, and 
familiar with the Indian tongue, Boone quickly scented 
the impending danger, determined to escape at once 
at all hazards and warn his friends, and before another 
sunrise he had left the salt spring far in the rear. On a 
horse that Hamilton had given him he moved swiftly 
down the silent channel of track-obliterating streams, 
forced his way through dense reaches of encompassing 
cane, and, with face turned toward the Ohio River, entered 
a leafy wilderness as vast as the ocean itself. On the 
20th of the month, after an almost incredible journey, 
which left him emaciated and starving, he arrived at 
Boonesborough, which greeted him as one just risen from 
the dead. The whole population rushed up to him with 
astonishment and delight. There was an eager minis- 
tering to his wants, a thousand questions asked, sympathy 
in his bitter disappointment at the absence of his family, 
and no little alarm and consternation at his news. For 
about ten days there was great anxiety and activity. 
The posterns and bastions were strengthened, badly needed 
repairs were made, and the garrison actually began to dig 

' Campbell's Virgioia, and Volume I, American Pioneer. This fort was 
about ten miles north of Lewisburg, in what is now West Virginia. 



7° Boonesborough 

a well, ' but when the scouts reported no signs of an 
advance of the enemy the pioneers, with their usual 
strange but characteristic carelessness, abandoned the effort 
to secure a regular supply of water inside the stockade. In 
the meanwhile Clark's little force had left Kentucky for the 
Illinois country, and Boone, anxious as he was about his 
family, would not abandon the settlements, now weaker 
than ever in riflemen and threatened with an invasion 
which he was sure would sooner or later occur. 

Early in July a party of riflemen made a venturesome 
march to that camp-ground on the Licking that seemed 
ever to be a fatal spot to the pioneers, and recovered the 
kettles that were so sadly needed. Later on "Simon 
Butler" returned with the inspiring news of the capture 
of Kaskaskia, to which was soon added the tidings of the 
arrival of the French fleet, causing the rejoicing garrison 
to almost forget its danger, when another prisoner of 
Black Fish — Stephen Hancock — reached the fort, after 
six months of privations, bringing the depressing informa- 
tion that the savage movement against Boonesborough 
was liable to occur at any time, and had only been tem- 
porarily delayed by the flight and warning of Boone. 

'Western Review, Volume I. This stupidity in failing to provide wells 
inside of stations was not monopolized by the Kentucky pioneers. It was 
a common omission. Even Vincennes had no well within its walls at this 
time. See Haldimand manuscripts. 



Boonesborough 71 

After this, in August, the scouts reported that the war 
parties of the Shawanese were again concentrating at 
ChilHcothe, and the settlers were on the lookout for the 
invasion, but for some reason it did not occur, and about 
the middle of the month hearts were made lighter by 
intelligence of the capture of Vincennes and of the friendly 
feeling so plainly exhibited to Americans, since the French 
alliance, by the unstable French residents of the North- 
west, who were especially noted for their intimacy with 
the Indians. 

But the fall of Vincennes was the very thing that pre- 
cipitated the long-deferred invasion, for Hamilton, terribly 
mortified and exasperated by Clark's success, energetically 
urged on the lagging Ohio savages to action against the 
"rebels of Kentuck. " 

Boone, who had already sent a messenger to the Hol- 
ston settlements' announcing the threatened danger and 
asking for aid, determined, though no reinforcements had 
yet arrived, to acquaint himself clearly with the move- 
ments of the enemy. Heading a party, which subsisted 
on parched corn and such provisions as were secured on 
the way, he crossed the Ohio, scouted about the familiar 
spring and town of his captivity, and after a skirmish, in 

'Colonel Arthur Campbell, Washiugton County, Virginia, was the mili- 
tary commandant. 



72 Boonesborough 

which one savage was killed, discovered that the Indians 
had not only concentrated but had actually begun their 
march. He at once ordered a rapid retreat, evaded the 
advancing enemy, and, with all his men except Butler and 
Alexander Montgomery, who expected to catch up after 
one more adventure, reached Boonesborough in safety. 

The invading expedition, which was the largest that 
had yet threatened the Kentucky settlements, consisted, 
according to the conservative Boone, of four hundred 
and forty-four Indians and twelve Frenchmen.' The 
savages, with a few exceptions, were Shawanese, and 
the whole force was under the command of one of the 
ablest and most eloquent chiefs of that tribe, the veteran 
Black Fish,^ son of Puckashinwa, who fell at Kanawha in 

' Several imaginative writers make the force number six hundred, and 
two aged pioneers, many years after the event, ran the figures up to a 
thousand. We give Boone's estimate because he was personally familiar, 
from recent captivity, with the fighting strength of the Shawanese, and 
because his statement is substantially confirmed by contemporary evidence, 
viz : Hamilton's own letter of September 5, 1778, in Haldimand manuscripts. 

^See Nathaniel Hart, in Shane's Collection; Captain John Carr, in 
"Indian Battles;" John Bradford's "Notes," and Lossing. Boone's Nar- 
rative only says, in a vague and general way, that ' ' the Indian army was 
commanded by Captain DuQuesne(?), eleven other Frenchmen, and some 
of their chiefs," but J. M. Peck, who subsequently wrote an accurate and 
valuable life of Boone from data given him by the old pioneer himself, 
makes Black Fish the commander. Doctor L. C. Draper, who was backed 
by much manuscript contemporary information on this point, says posi- 
tively in his manuscript on Boone that the French and Indians were "all 
under the command of Black Fish." 



Boonesborough 73 

1774. As already related, Black Fish had participated 
in Kentucky expeditions twice, if not oftener, before this. 
His principal aide and adviser was Lieutenant Antoine 
Dagnieau DeQuindre, a French Canadian of the Detroit 
Militia, and the leader of the above-mentioned squad of 
his countrymen, which Hamilton had detailed to carry a 
stock of ammunition to the Indians and to otherwise 
assist them in this expedition.' DeQuindre was thirty-five 
years of age, and, though a resident of Detroit, was a 
native of Montreal. He is the same person who, through 
some error, was mentioned in Boone's Narrative as 
"DuQuesne," a misspelling of the name and a confusion 
of the identity of DeChaine (Isadore), who was a mem- 
ber of the squad, but who was conspicuous only in his 
usual capacity of interpreter.^ The mistake was perpetu- 
ated for more than a century. Peter Douiller, a trader 
well known at Detroit, was also connected with the French 
contingent. Each of the principal Indian colleagues of 
Black Fish was, like himself, a veteran. One was Black 
Bird, 3 called by Governor Patrick Henry "the great Chip- 

' Haldimand manuscripts. 

= The mythical name, "DuQuesne," used for the first time in Filson's 
Boone of 1784, was accepted for more than a hundred years as the cor- 
rect name of the leader of the French squad. The real name, DeQuindre, 
was established beyond a doubt by the publication, only a few years ago,' 
by the Canadian Government of the exceedingly interesting and valuable 
Haldimand manuscripts. 

3 This chiefs name is correctly given as above in Clark's Diary. 



74 Boonesborough 

pewa Chief," and who very shortly after this changed to 
the American side. Another was Moluntha, a leader of 
the Shawanese in all the serious movements against the 
Kentucky posts, and still another was the sagacious and 
distinguished Catahecassa, or Black Hoof, who was already 
a mature warrior when he participated in Braddock's 
defeat of 1755, and who was probably the only Indian 
who could claim to be a native of Kentucky, ' as he was 
born on the margin of what was afterward known as 
Lulbegrud Creek, in Clark County, where his Shawanese 
parents had a temporary hunting-camp. One negro was 
along, a man named Pompey, captured, doubtless, from 
some settlement, but none the less a slave, and mainly 
useful to the Indians because he could speak English.* 
As usual, the savages were scantily equipped, with a view 
only to a short campaign. No warrior carried any thing 
heavier than a flint-lock rifle and a buckskin wallet of 
parched corn,^ for wild game was depended on for meat, 

'Harvey's History of the Shawanese. History of the Indian Tribes. 
Black Hoof revisited his birthplace in 1816. He died in 1831, after attaining 
a wonderful age, estimated at one hundred and twelve to one hundred 
and twenty years. 

' Some of the Indians kept negro slaves, and frequently sold them. Of 
the population of Detroit at this time, one hundred and twenty-seven were 
slaves worth each from £180 to £260 in New York currency, says Hal- 
dimand's manuscripts. 

' They did not expect to secure corn in Kentucky, where they had made 
it almost impossible for the settlers to cultivate it that season. 



B oonesborottgh 75 

but a train of pack-horses was along devoted mainly to 
the carriage of extra ammunition and of such provisions 
and conveniences as were absolutely necessary to the 
simple-habited but less seasoned militia. But, as will be 
seen later on, the pack-horses were expected to do still 
more important service. 

And so, with scalp-locks befeathered and their more 
than half-naked bodies streaked with the war-paint they 
so delighted in," the savages moved swiftly to the Ohio, 
crossed it near the mouth of Cabin Creek,' from whence 
they followed the ancient war road of their race to a 
point beyond the Upper Blue Licks, where they entered 
a great buffalo trace which extended toward and far 
beyond the stockaded posts of their enemies. The Indians 
made a rapid march, and Boone and his scouting party 
made a narrow escape. The hunters galloped into the 
fort some time before sunset on the afternoon of the 6th 
of September, and that night the savages camped on the 
north bank of the Kentucky. 

Early on the morning of the next day, Monday, Sep- 
tember 7, 1778, the dusky crowd crossed the river about 

' The savages used immense quantities of paint in the decoration of 
their persons. Hamilton, in a report for this very month (September) of 
goods on hand at Detroit for the Indian department, mentions "eighty 
pounds of rose pink and five hundred pounds of vermilion." 

^Near the present Maysville, Kentucky. 



76 Boonesborough 

half a mile below the present ferry, ' at a point still known 
as "Blackfish Ford," climbed the steep southern bank, 
passed to the rear of ' ' Hackberry Ridge, " marched along 
its base until nearly opposite Boonesborough, and then 
crossing it, came down to a cover of trees and under- 
growth within rifle shot of the fort. The position was 
gained without the firing of a gun. The settlers were too 
utterly weak for any contest outside of their wooden 

' We give September 7th as the date of the commencement of this 
siege, because it is the only date supported by contemporary evidence, that 
is, documents written at the time. Colonel John Bowman, in his letter 
(see Appendix Y) of October 14, 1778, less than a month after the siege, 
forwarded from Harrodsburg to Colonel George Rogers Clark, says that 
the Indians and French appeared at Boonesborough September 7th. The 
British contemporary account points the same way, for before Bowman 
wrote. Governor Hamilton, in a letter of September 16, 1778, reports to 
Sir Frederick Haldimand that the Shawanese, with DeQuindre, had gone 
to attack the forts on the " Kentucke," and on September 26th, before 
he could have heard of the outcome of the expedition, says "the Shawa- 
nese have not yet broke up their little siege." (See Haldimand manu- 
scripts.) Two, at least, of the leading participants in the siege afterward 
stated the time of its commencement, viz : Daniel Boone, who gave it as 
the 8th of August in his Narrative, dictated six years after the event, and 
William Bailey Smith, who (in Volume HI of Western Review), after a 
still longer interval, gave the same date as Bowman. Boone may be said 
to have substantially corrected his date when, some years after the publi- 
cation of his Narrative, he and another eye-witness of the siege, Flanders 
Calloway, furnished Reverend Mr. Peck the facts for his Life of Boone, 
which gives the time as September 7th, but Marshall, Bradford, and other 
historians, who did not have the benefit of the Bowman, Hamilton, and 
Peck data, adopted and long perpetuated the date as given in the first 
life of Boone. The evidence quoted fixes the date as September 7th, the 
date also given by the late Lyman C. Draper, after a full and careful 
investigation. 



BoonesborotLgh 77 

stronghold, for, according to one of its defenders,' its 
whole fighting force then amounted to but thirty men 
and twenty boys. ^ One may well believe it after the loss 
of the salt-makers, the return home of the militia and 
discouraged immigrants, and the absence of a few of the 
riflemen with Clark. The women, ^ though, should have 
been reckoned in — they certainly deserved to be — for in 
courage and marksmanship they were not to be despised. 
Neither concealment nor surprise was attempted by the 
Indians, not only because they knew that the garrison 
was already warned, but for other reasons. They were 
hopeful of capturing the place without a fight. They 
were greatly attached to Boone," who understood them 
so well, and who certainly was not a vindictive enemy, 
and in spite of his desertion they were confident that he 
was equally attached to them and could be persuaded to 
return to his adopted home. They evidently believed 
that the garrison was so favorably impressed with their 

' William Bailey Smith. 

' In addition to the boys who lived in the fort were several who were 
there temporarily, having come in as pack-horse drivers. 

3 Jemima Boone and the wives and daughters of the few families still 
remaining in the fort, including Richard Calloway's and Squire Boone's, 
comprised almost the entire white female population during the siege. 

♦There is nothing more plainly expressed in Boone's Narrative than 
this. He declares that he had the "entire friendship" of the Shawanese 
King; that he "had a great share in the affections of his new parents, 
brothers, sisters, and friends," and that the Indians refused a ransom of 
five hundred dollars for him. 



78 Boo7tesborough 

good faith at the Blue Licks surrender, and their really 
humane treatment' of the captured salt-makers, and that 
the settlers had suffered such long and terrible privations 
that all that was needed to insure a capitulation was the 
appearance of an overwhelming force, an assurance of 
honorable terms, of a safe conduct to the tempting flesh- 
pots of Detroit, and of a comfortable refuge there from the 
certain miseries of the approaching winter. It is a mat- 
ter of record that Hamilton himself labored for a while 
under the same delusion,^ and this belief of the savages, 
strange as it may sound to civilized ears, cut no small 
figure in this event, partly accounts for their remarkable 
forbearance at the beginning of the siege, and resulted in 
great advantage to the garrison. There is no contem- 
porary evidence to support the time-honored but fanciful 
assertion that the enemy marched up to Boonesborough 
"brandishing their rifles and with fearful yells." The 
truth is that they made no hostile demonstrations what- 
ever when they first appeared, but, on the contrary, they 
immediately sent forward an unarmed English-speaking 
messenger with a flag of truce, and as he passed over 

'It is only fair to the much-abused Hamilton to say that the conduct 
of the Ohio Indians at this time tallied with the declaration in his report 
of July 6, 1781, that he then, at least, tried to carry out the orders of 
Lord George Germain to restrain the Indians from barbarities. (See Hal- 
dimand manuscripts.) 

^ See Hamilton to Carleton in Haldimand manuscripts. 



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Boonesborough 79 

the cleared ground that intervened between the sheltered 
Indians and the fort there were no more alarming tokens 
of a martial host than the neighing and stamping of a 
multitude of pack-horses and ponies. 

In its shape and outlines, at least, Boonesborough at 
this time was substantially what it had always been, but 
instead of but one double bastion, as formerly, another 
story had been added to each of the three single ones, 
so that now all four of the corners were provided with / 
regular block-houses, and cabins occupied some of the 
spaces guarded before only by the pickets of the stockade. 

The lonely station never looked more peaceful than it 
did in the cool of this early summer-like morning, for it 
was determined before the Indians arrived to conceal as 
much as possible the feebleness of its force by keeping 
close within the stockade and out of sight of the enemy. 
The lumbering gates were closed, and the sounds of life 
were so faint and few that but for the smoke that 
ascended from the rude kitchen chimneys the inex- 
perienced might have imagined that the garrison slept. 
But all the same every soul within the station was keen- 
ly alive to the magnitude and the imminence of the 
danger, and hearts were beating painfully, eyes were 
glued to port-holes, and ears were strained to catch the 
slightest sound as the messenger of the savages advanced. 



8o Boonesborough 



Mounting a stump within easy calling distance of the fort, 
and keeping his white flag conspicuously displayed, he 
gave notice of his presence by the usual prolonged and 
peculiar ' ' hello " of the woodsman. There was no reply 
and no sign that he was even seen. The leaders of 
Boonesborough understood Indian nature too well to betray 
their weakness by either hurry or excitement, and it was 
only after the call was repeated that an answering ' ' hello " 
came from the block-house nearest to him. He then 
announced himself as a messenger from a British force, 
with instructions to say that its commander was the 
bearer of letters from Governor Hamilton ' to Captain 
Boone, and desired a meeting of the opposing chiefs to 
consider their contents. The garrison, secretly delighted 
with this chance to open negotiations with the hope of 
gaining time for the arrival of the Holston men, con- 
sented, after a deliberate silence and apparent reluctance, 
to receive the letters, but only under the guns of the 
fort and at the hands of three unarmed leaders of the 
enemy. These conditions were agreed to, and the bearer 
of the flag of truce not only quickly announced the 
presence of Black Fish, DeQuindre, and Moluntha, but, 
as a token of their good faith, brought from them a 
present of seven roasted buffalo tongues,' which had a 

' Bradford and McAfee. 
' Bradford. 



Boonesborotigh 8i 

welcome from the half-starved settlers that the enemy 
little dreamed of. The two chiefs and the Canadian 
were met by Captain Boone, Colonel Calloway, and Major 
W. B. Smith," carrying only a pipe and a white handker- 
chief tied to a ramrod, and the messenger acted as 
interpreter. This meeting with his adopted father was 
embarrassing enough to the runaway Boone, for Black Fish 
had in truth made him a member of his family, but even 
more was he troubled at meeting Moluntha, "the Shaw- 
anese King," who had been particularly kind to him,=' for 
that chief sorrowfully reproached him for killing his son 
"the other day over the Ohio," but Boone assured him 
that that act was not his. Hamilton's letters, which were 
delivered by Black Fish, evidently contained a demand 
for the surrender of the post on terms that both the 
Governor and the Indians thought too seductive to be 
resisted, for the old chief, with neighborly consideration, 
assured the Boonesborough delegation that ' ' he had come 
to take the people away easily; that he had brought 
along forty horses for the old folks, the women, and the 
children to ride."-' The pioneers, apparently pleased, but 
intent on delay, proposed a truce of two days to enable 

' Some writers on this subject hopelessly confuse the actions of the 
messenger and the proceedings of this meeting with the subsequent treaty 
conference, observing neither order nor the sequence of the events. 

^ Boone's Narrative. 

3 Bradford. 



82 Boonesborough 

all the garrison to consider the Governor's terms. To 
this the complacent savages, blinded by the bloodless 
capitulation at the Blue Licks, immediately consented, 
and the meeting closed. . After an astonishingly free and 
friendly stroll together about the exterior of the still 
silent fort, the parties separated, and each retired in high 
good humor to its own camp, from which neither side 
was to make a hostile movement until the expiration of 
the truce. 

Great as were the odds against them, and desperate 
as the situation seemed, the men and women of Boones- 
borough made short work of Hamilton's proposition. 
Convinced by this time that the enemy had no artillery, 
confident from the statement about the ' ' forty horses " 
that the savages were ignorant of the weakness of the 
garrison, protected by walls that laughed at rifles — walls 
which the benumbed salt-makers had so fatally lacked — 
and hoping still for the Virginia militia who had made 
no sign, they unanimously decided against a surrender 
and proceeded at once to make every arrangement that 
the emergency permitted to withstand a siege. For- 
tunately the fort had already been repaired, and the horses 
of the scouting party at least were within the stockade, 
but, alas, the well had been neglected until every soul 
was needed for the work of defense alone, and all sud- 



Boonesboro7io;h 83 



^ 



denly realized that they were to be cut off from their 
regular water-supply when the weather was hottest and 
when the very fate of the garrison might depend upon 
it. But, to the surprise and delight of the settlers, there 
were no hostile movements whatever from the Indians 
when trips were made to and from the fort to the Lick 
Spring, and all the water was secured that could possibly 
be obtained without exciting their suspicions. There was 
a general cleaning of rifles and picking of fiints, powder 
was distributed, an extra stock of bullets moulded, and 
the women and children, as well as the men, though 
intensely excited, resolutely pushed on the preparations. 
Toward sunset there was another striking exhibition of 
the forbearance of the singularly friendly savages, for the 
cows and other live stock were unmolested by them and 
came up to the back of the fort as usual, and they were 
not only brought in and penned, but as soon as darkness 
permitted the garden that had been possible only under 
the very guns of the fort was gleaned of such of its 
scant store of vegetables as could be used by man or 
beast. That night a sentinel was on the lookout in every 
block-house, and every man in the station, whether watch- 
ing or dozing, held on to his rifle, but no shot was fired 
either then or the next day, for the painted warriors hon- 
orably observed the truce to its close, and then in the 



^4 Boonesborough 

cool of the second evening the white flag was seen again, 
and Black Fish and his little party soon arrived in front 
of the fort and confidently awaited the announcement of 
its surrender. The answer from Boone himself that the 
garrison had " determined to defend the fort while a man 
was living," and the sudden realization that their favorite 
and enforced kinsman had no intention of returning to 
his adopted tribe, astonished, disappointed, and exasper- 
ated the Indians, who, in this matter, seem to have 
indeed been "children of the forest." But they were as 
grave and impassive as ever when they heard the news, 
when they stepped aside to deliberate, and when, after 
the speedy adoption of a new plan of action, they returned 
to the meeting-place. They were convinced that there 
was no chance for either a complete surprise or a peace- 
ful surrender of the place. To attempt to storm it with 
no appliances whatever for that purpose was not to be 
thought of and would be not only directly contrary to 
their usual wily and cautious course, but especially dan- 
gerous and unadvisable in view of the recent report of 
reinforcements,' which the conduct of the garrison seemed 

' Before they started od this expedition the Shawanese had captured 
a Kentucky prisoner who, for his own purposes, no doubt, gave out the 
news that the forts there "had lately been reinforced with three com- 
panies each of seventy men." (See Hamilton to Haldimand about Sep- 
tember I, 1778, in Haldimand manuscripts.) 



Boonesborotigh 85 

to confirm. The decision was for stratagem, and the 
settlers, who expected an immediate opening of hostilities, 
were in turn astonished when conciliatory overtures were 
made by DeQuindre through the interpreter, DeChaine. 
The Canadian said they had come to talk of peace, not of 
war ; that they had not contemplated war even if a sur- 
render was declined; if they had, they never would have 
allowed the cattle to enter the stockade ; that Governor 
Hamilton's orders were to avoid bloodshed, and that, 
therefore, he suggested that a meeting be held to frame 
a treaty of peace, and that if nine representative men 
from the garrison would sign such a treaty, the Indians 
would withdraw.' Ordinarily such a proposition from such 
a greatly superior force would have been regarded at once 
as sinister and absurd, but the circumstances were far 
from being ordinary. The pioneers had the same strong 
reason as ever for wanting to gain time. They hoped a 
little from the genuine friendship of Hamilton for Boone, 
more from the affection of the Shawanese for their adopted 

' Speaking of this proposition of DeQuindre, Colonel Bowman says in 
his letter to Clark of October 14, 1778 (see Appendix): "Hearing that 
the Indians gladly treated with you at the Illinois gave them (the Boones- 
borough men) reason to think that the Indians were sincere." In a letter 
of September 5, 1778, Hamilton says: "For the French inhabitants at 
all the outposts, I firmly believe, there is not one in twenty whose oath 
of allegiance would have force enough to bind him to his duty ; added to 
this, that the greatest part of the traders among them, who are called 
English, are rebels in their hearts." (Haldimand manuscripts.) 



86 Boonesborough 

kinsman, but above all they were encouraged to treat by 
the wonderful transformation that Clark had brought 
about in "the Illinois." They knew that there the 
French Canadians had not only become enthusiastic 
adherents of the American cause, but had strongly influ- 
enced the savages the same way. The settlers had 
heard of the gratifying change of front of the Indians at 
Cahokia, and rumors were rife that even the British 
traders and interpreters were secretly working against the 
King, and that he had enemies inside the very walls of 
Detroit itself. These rumors were subsequently verified, 
and, with the light we now have from British sources, one 
can imagine without much effort the possibility of a repe- 
tition of the Cahokia transaction at Boonesborough at this 
time if another Clark had then confronted the Indians and 
Canadians.' Hopeful, but especially intent on gaining 
time, the Kentuckians consented to the conference to be 
held the next morning ; but, suspicious ever of the savages, 
they took care to do so only on condition that it be held 

'The united influence of the French Alliance and Clark's success on 
the Indians and Canadians of the West was great. One of the most 
important leaders of the Boonesborough expedition. Black Bird, went over 
to the Americans immediately after this siege, as did, later on, one of the 
officers, Baubin, who had aided in the capture of the salt-makers at the 
Blue Licks. Some of LaMothe's company of Detroit militia deserted Ham- 
ilton, and so many others — Indians, officers, and men — proved false, that 
Hamilton afterward declared that "the secret treason" of such had ruined 
him. (See Haldimand manuscripts.) 



Boonesborough 87 

in the hollow at the Lick Spring,' which could be easily 
swept by riflemen from the bastion nearest to it. Black 
Fish and his colleagues retired to their camp, and the 
garrison selected its peace commissioners. As far as 
known, they were Daniel Boone, Richard Calloway, Will- 
iam Bailey Smith, and William Buchanan, with their 
"subalterns," Squire Boone, Flanders Calloway, Stephen 
Hancock, and William Hancock." Instructions were given 
for every woman and child, white and black, in the fort 
to make a showing at the pickets the next morning, as 
men, to impress the enemy with the strength of the gar- 
rison, and for that purpose every old hat and hunting- 
shirt in the station was gathered up, and some new ones 
even were hastily manufactured. ^ 

The next morning, Wednesday, the 9th, when Black 
Fish, DeQuindre, the older chiefs, interpreters, and attend- 
ants filed down to the meeting-place they did not fail 
to note the large number of hatted heads that bobbed 
up at the top of the stockade to see them pass, and 
were doubtless disgusted at the apparent confirmation of 
the report as to the strength of the garrison. What they 

'John Bowman and R. B. McAfee manuscripts. 

^John Bowman, Peck, and records Circuit Court Clerk's office, Madi- 
son County, Kentucky. Boone is indefinite and gives no names. Accord- 
ing to Judge William Chenault, Buchanan was from Virginia, where he 
had been a captain of militia. 

3 Daniel Trabue. 



88 BoonesboroMgk 



did not see when Boone and his companions joined them 
was the Httle band of sharpshooters that moved at once 
to the block-house that commanded the rendezvous. Both 
parties, unarmed, sought the shade of the great sycamores 
near the Lick Spring, where the pioneers were invited to 
seat themselves on deerskins and panther-skins spread 
on the ground by their hospitable enemies, who passed 
around the pipe and the whisky. The day was spent in 
pow-wows, which the settlers protracted, and in feasting — 
the besiegers seeking, with suspicious generosity, to beguile 
the half-starved "rebels" with eatables and drinkables 
from the British commissary department at Detroit, such 
as most of them had not seen, much less tasted, in many 
a long month. By sunset a compact, inscrutable to this 
day, was agreed to, which was to be signed the next 
morning. The settlers seemed completely hoodwinked, 
hilarity reigned, and DeQuindre was confident that the 
royal standard of England would quickly float over the 
wooden walls of Boonesbojrough. Neither party was sin- 
cere. That night, unseen, a strong detachment of the 
Indian army, detailed to assist in a surprise, hid itself in 
the weeds and underbrush that skirted the hollow. The 
next morning when Black Fish led the way toward a 
rude table under the great elm, the watchful settlers were 
struck by the fact that stalwart young bucks had taken 



B oonesborougk 89 

the place of most of the old Indians who had figured as 
attendants the day before," and they mentioned it, but 
Black Fish coolly and unblushingly declared that his party 
was unchanged. Be that as it may, every rifleman in the 
fort was ordered to keep his eye on the hollow and to 
fire on the redskins at the waving of a hat. The sham 
treaty was signed, and Black Fish then declared that it 
must be confirmed by what he said was the Indian cus- 
tom — a hand-shake all around, two braves to each white 
brother. ^^ It was the signal for treachery. The young 
Indians, in apparently high good-humor, seized the hands 
of the pioneers, but in the very act they betrayed their 
purpose by too tight a grasp and by a sudden movement 
toward the underbrush. Suspicious, alert, and quick, with 
the quickness of desperation the hunters freed themselves 
almost as soon as touched, and in the same thrilling 
moment, as they sprang aside and waved their hats, came 
the deadly crack of the ready rifles from the block-house, 
and the unarmed savages vanished in the surrounding 
thickets. 3 Then up the steep hill dashed the fleeing 
pioneers, bounding from tree to tree and from stump to 
stump to protect themselves from the hail of bullets sent 
after them by the enraged ambuscaders, whose carefully 

' Bradford. 
^ Bowman. 

3 Bowman, Smith, Boone, and Trabue. 

13 



90 Boonesborough 

planned rush on the fort was summarily defeated, as they 
were far too wise to expose themselves in the open to 
the fire of such a force as they believed defended the 
rough but formidable stockade. At least two hundred 
guns were fired by the invisible combatants, but the leaden 
storm was mainly spent on the logs of the block-house 
and on the sycamores at the lick, for all the "rebels" 
but one gained the fort at last unhurt. Squire Boone 
was wounded in the left shoulder, and another ' ' com- 
missioner, " caught within range of the Indian rifles, 
remained for many weary hours flat on his face behind a 
stump, and only reached the fort when night came down 
and hid him from savage view. But the firing, the swift- 
running, and the ' ' treeing " that followed the treachery 
at the elm were succeeded with surprising suddenness 
by totally different sounds and movements in the camp 
of the enemy. All during the afternoon there was a bustle 
that indicated the gathering up and gearing of ponies 
and the loading of pack-horses, and many orders that 
were given with suspicious loudness were understood by 
members of the garrison familiar with the Indian tongue. 
The Shawanese evidently meant it to be known that they 
were disgusted with their luck and were preparing to 
leave. That night — Thursday^ a heavy detail of Indians 
was again concealed as close to the fort as possible, and 



Boonesborough 91 

the next morning just before day, when it was still too 
dark for the watching settlers to distinguish any thing 
clearly, what seemed the whole force of the enemy noisily 
retreated. ' Their horses were heard splashing and clat- 
tering as they crossed the river. The calls of DeQuindre's 
bugle resounded through the neighboring hills, and then 
grew fainter and fainter, and died away at last in the 
dark and wooded distance. Then the marching Indians 
quickly and noiselessly retraced their steps and posted 
themselves in ambush near the buffalo road and close to 
the north bank of the river. And so another trap was 
set for the pioneers, but it was set in vain. When the 
sun rose that Friday morning it was on a quiet and 
peaceful scene. There was neither sight nor sound of 
the enemy, nor the faintest hint of an ambuscade. The 
savages seemed of a certainty to have left the station 
far behind them, but all the same no settler stepped 
foot outside its walls. How the pioneers detected their 
danger is not now known, but detect it they did, and the 
gates of the fort remained as securely barred as ever. 
This convinced the impatient Indians that their trick had 
failed, and inside of an hour they were as thick about 
Boonesborough as before. All that day, protected by 
trees and stumps and prostrate behind logs and hillocks, 

' R. B. McAfee. 



92 Boonesborough 

the savages directed their rifle balls at every crack and 
port-hole of the station that might possibly have life 
behind it. The deep gorge of the Kentucky echoed and 
re-echoed with the shots of the contending forces, and at 
night the surrounding forests, the solemn chfTs, and the 
everlasting hills were doubly sublime in the red glow of 
a multitude of savage camp-fires. The siege was now 
prosecuted in earnest, and every effort short of direct 
assault was made to reduce the wooden stronghold. Such 
an assault up and over no small area of cleared and open 
ground, that could be swept by such a force of sharp- 
shooters as the Indians believed the fort contained, was 
not a part of the cautious savage programme. This was 
made still more evident the very day the enemy returned 
from the pretended retreat. Between the spells of firing 
new sounds like those of woodchoppers at work were 
heard coming up from the river bank back of the fort, 
and shortly after a broad muddy streak was noticed to 
commence in the water at the same locality and extend 
further and further down the stream. The curiosity these 
suspicious signs awakened inside the station grew at once 
into lively alarm, when, after no little exposure and risk, 
one of the garrison reported that he had caught a glimpse 
over the cliff of a pole moving as if it was being used to 
loosen ' dirt. All jumped to the conclusion that DeQuindre, 

'Trabue, McAfee, and Draper. 



Boonesborough 93 

concealed and protected by the cliff, was trying to push 
a mine from the river bank up to or under the back wall 
of the fort, and that the incessant firing of the Indians 
was mainly intended to hide his design by drowning the 
sounds of the work and diverting attention from its loca- 
tion. As it was important to determine as quickly as 
possible whether this surmise was correct, the settlers 
erected of thick lumber a rough but bullet-proof attempt 
at a watch-tower.' It was built on top of the cabin 
which three years before had served Henderson as a 
kitchen, and which was evidently nearest to the scene of 
the suspected mischief. The fears of the garrison were 
now confirmed, for the watchers saw the fresh earth as it 
was thrown from the excavation into the river. It was a 
thrilling discovery. Great and unexpected dangers threat- 
ened them. The allies certainly designed either to blow 
up the fort or to suddenly capture it by throwing their 
force into it through this underground passage. But the 
garrison faced these new perils as resolutely as it had 
confronted the others. The tower was made still stronger 
to serve as a sort of "battery," and day and night it 
was occupied by scant details of riflemen, who wearily 
watched with ready guns for any suspicious thing that 
might spring up outside the wall from the now danger- 
charged earth. Inside the fort little relays of its defenders 

' Draper. 



94 Boonesborougk 

were set to work on a countermine ' or trench which 
would expose and cut off the tunnel of the enemy, and 
which would require only a few men to balk a whole 
subterranean force. This countermine, which was about 
three feet wide and of considerable depth, and which cost 
days of excessive labor, was commenced inside of Hen- 
derson's kitchen, and extended up the river through several 
other cabins that helped to form the back wall of the 
station. A spell of cloudy, drizzly weather which set in 
about this time and reduced the fierce September heat 
was especially grateful to the weary diggers, while the 
whole garrison rejoiced that it lessened the demands on 
the fast-diminishing supply of water. 

Every morning at daybreak both sides resumed their 
efforts to pick oft the unwary. In this petty warfare 
the pioneers took by far the most careful part in the 
effort to save precious ammunition ; ^ but desultory as the 
firing was, and at long range, no day went by without 
one side or the other adding its little quota to the list 
of either killed or wounded. A notable shot, attributed 
of course to Daniel Boone, and fired probably from the 
"battery," killed Pompey,^ the only negro man, as afore- 

' Trabue, McAfee, and W. B. Smith. 

' The Indians, according to Boone, wasted one hundred and twenty-five 
pounds of bullets, which were afterward picked up about the fort. 
3 Peck. 



Boonesborough 95 

said, known to have been with the savages. He was 
sheltered by a tree, from which he was trying to pick 
off imprudent settlers, when he exposed himself for an 
instant, and that instant was a fatal one to him. Once, 
indeed, the pioneers ambitiously ventured beyond the use 
of the rifle, and prompted, it is said, by Colonel Callaway, 
emulated the artillery of another era by making a wooden 
cannon, ' which was banded with such strap iron as the 
station afforded, and loaded with musket balls. Its first 
shot was directed against a knot of Indians who, thinking 
they were fully protected, both by distance and location, 
amused themselves by yelling taunts and curses at the 
garrison. With one quick yell the savages vanished, but 
whether they sustained any loss is now unknown. The 
gun was a terror to them while it lasted, but unfortunately 
the next time it was used it went to pieces, and the 
Indians, suspecting what had happened, repeatedly dared 
the disgusted artillerymen, from a safe distance, to ' ' shoot 
the big gun again." 

On the night of Sunday, the thirteenth of the month, 
the seventh night after the arrival of the enemy, the 
settlers had the most frightful experience of the siege, 
for suddenly, when such a movement was entirely unsus- 
pected, the Indians succeeded in hurling lighted torches 

' Trabue. 



96 Boonesdorougk 

against a side of the stockade, and in lodging blazing 
arrows on the roofs of the cabins in that quarter,' and 
then to prevent the extinguishment of the fiery implements, 
swept the locality with bullets. As both torches and 
arrows were wrapped with flax stolen from an outside 
cabin, and with the inner oily fiber of the shell-bark 
hickory, they burned rapidly and fiercely. The garrison 
was terrorized, for the water-supply was about exhausted. 
The arrows could be battled with, but only with inflamma- 
ble brooms and while exposed to savage rifles, but the 
torches blazed on. The fort seemed doomed, and for a 
few terrible moments all was black despair within it, when 
directly the whole watching, heart-sick settlement saw 
with unspeakable relief that the arrows and torches were 
dying out, that the cabins were too damp after the recent 
drizzles to be ignited by them, and that the danger of a 
conflagration was over. Little was said, but the thanks- 
giving was deep and fervent. Boonesborough had escaped 
by the skin of its teeth. 

In the meanwhile the mining and countermining con- 
tinued, and as the siege dragged on the suffering of 
the settlers and the live stock from thirst was great and 
would have been unbearable but for timely showers that 
enabled the garrison to gather supplies of water from the 

' McAfee aud Bradford. 



Boonesborotigk 97 

cabin roofs.' Strange to say, the well, for some reason, 
seems never to have been completed. While digging his 
trench, Boone, to discourage the enemy by plain evidence 
of a countermine, contrived to have much of the excavated 
dirt hoisted up and thrown over the stockade,' but the 
Indians, with a persistency in manual labor that was 
remarkable if not unexampled in their history, continued 
their underground approach. It was a curious siege, and 
not less curious from some of the courtesies that each 
side indulged in. "What are you red rascals doing down 
there?" an old hunter would yell in Shawanese from 
the "battery" to the unseen Indians on the river bank 
below. "Digging!" would be the return yell. "Blow 
you all to devil soon; what you do?" "Oh!" would 
be the cheerful reply, ' ' we are digging to meet you, and 
intend to bury five hundred of you. " ' The banter was 
rough, but seems not to have been at all hostile ; at the 
same time the beleaguered riflemen conscientiously fired 
at every Indian who exposed himself in going to and 
from the tunnel and the camp. In fact, it was in this 
way that the besiegers suffered the most. 

By the fifteenth of the month the savages had pushed 
their mine so close to the fort that the guards in the 

I McAfee. 

° Kenton to James. 

3 Trabue's Memoir. 

14 



«. 



98 Boonesborough 

station trench could hear the sound of their implements,' 
and the settlers felt that the crisis was at hand. The 
outlook was black indeed. It was raining, and the pent-up 
people could slake their thirst, but they were worn out by 
labor, the heat, and incessant watching and by privations, 
for the long-drawn-out provisions were about exhausted, and 
though some of the miserably reduced live stock remained, 
the pioneers had already reached the starvation point. 
There were dissensions among the principal officers of the 
garrison," possibly over conflicting claims to the leadership. 
Colonel Callaway was the ranking officer ; Major W. B. 
Smith, however, according to what is apparently his own 
statement,' had been appointed commandant of the fort 
by Clark after the capture of Boone at the Blue Licks, 
while the actual leadership during the siege seems, by 
common consent of the settlers, to have fallen to Captain 
Daniel Boone from his special gifts and experience in 
Indian ways and warfare. The methods of Boone at this 
time were strongly disapproved by the venerable Callaway, 
but all were united in the face of the enemy, and especially 
now when the fate of Boonesborough was trembling in 
the balance. All day long the rain poured down in tor- 
rents upon ground already deeply soaked, and all day 

' Trabue. 

^ Hunt's Review, Volume III, 



Boonesboro7Lgh 99 

long the harassed and weary little garrison waited to meet, 
as best they could, the unknown event which they feared 
would herald the sudden onrush of the enemy. But the 
long and gloomy day was uneventful, ending in a night 
that wrought the apprehensions of all up to the highest 
pitch, for the darkness was so thick that the keenest 
watchers had no chance, except the poor one the flashes 
of lightning gave, to detect an advance of the enemy 
above the ground, while the tumult of the pouring rain 
and wind - swept forests drowned all other sounds and 
favored every movement of the mining force. Would 
the enemy blow up the postern gate and seek to capture 
the fort by a rush from the outside, or would they pen- 
etrate to the countermine and try that way to flood the 
interior of the station with warriors, or was all the mining 
a mere trick to cover a deeper and more deadly plan ? 
Miserably uncertain and terribly anxious, and only hoping 
now for the Holston militia, with that "hope deferred" 
which ' ' maketh the heart sick, " the men, women, and 
boys of Boonesborough watched and waited, with many a 
prayer, through the long, lagging hours for the quick and 
bloody incident that would signalize the attack. Even in 
this, the season of their greatest extremity, there was no 
thought of surrender. Encompassed overwhelmingly by 
the savage power of England, cut off from the world in 

L.ofC. 



loo Boonesborottgh 

the depths of a soHtude vast and obscure, forgotten by 
the overburdened Continental Congress, unaided by hard- 
pressed Virginia, worn out by privations and sorely 
tempted, the feeble little handful of ' ' rebels " at Boones- 
borough were true to the last to the principles of the 
Revolution, and battled as valiantly and suflfered as nobly 
for freedom and for country as did the men of Bunker 
Hill or the shivering heroes of Valley Forge. 

The weary night dragged to an end at last, the rain 
ceased, and the vigilant settlers were surprised to discover 
that no sounds whatever came from the mysterious mine, 
that no dreaded disaster of any kind had happened, and the 
bright and beautiful Wednesday of September' the i6th, 
1778, found all Boonesborough hopeful again and devoutly 
thankful but immeasurably bewildered. Why was the 
big tunnel so strangely silent, and why all that commo- 
tion on the river trace? Directly the blessed truth dawned 
upon them that the whole savage army was in full but 
leisurely retreat, but not till high noon, when wary scouts 
returned with the glad tidings that the enemy was cer- 
tainly gone and no new trick was being practiced, did 
they throw open the gates, release the starving, half-mad 
cattle, give way to rejoicing, and indulge in the luxury of 
a rest. The wet weather had done more to balk the 
Indians than rifles or wooden walls. The rain had not 

'See note on page 76 and Bowman's letter, which gives length of siege. 



Boonesborough loi 

only strengthened the thirsty garrison and saved the fort 
from destruction by fire, but, as the settlers soon dis- 
covered, it had caused such quantities of the saturated 
earth to cave in and obstruct the mine as to effectually 
ruin it, and the fickle savages, who never willingly engaged 
at all at any manual labor, had abandoned the siege in 
inexpressible disgust.' It is probable from the collection 
of huge torches and other inflammable articles that the 
Indians had prepared and abandoned, that they intended 
to emerge from the mine just outside the back wall of 
the station and burn a passage through it for the entrance 
of their army." It goes without saying that no pursuit 
of the savages was possible by a garrison so feeble, so 
much exhausted, and whose necessities were so great. 
Though closely invested for nine days and nights, such 
was the protection afforded by the simple but effective 
defenses of Boonesborough that its garrison had only two 
killed and four wounded, while the enemy had ' ' thirty- 
seven killed and a great many wounded."^ The dead 

' Boone was under the impression that it was the discovery of the 
countermine that caused the Indians to raise the siege. That certainly 
discouraged them, but it is plain from the statement of " Drewyer" 
(Douiller) to Kenton at Detroit that the caving in of the tunnel was the 
crushing blow to the Indians. 

^Pioneer statements in Draper manuscript. (See Judge James' Notes.) 

3 We give the figures of Boone himself, who was singularly calm and 

unprejudiced. Another "eye-witness" of the siege says that two hundred 

Indians were killed, and no telling how many more were wounded. Not 

a few of the statements of the pioneers are fanciful, conflicting, and 



I02 Boonesborotigh 

settlers were, of necessity, buried inside the stockade. The 
Indians, as usual, hid away their slain and obliterated 
every sign that might betray their resting-places. It is 
said that the only body they did not remove was that 
of the negro already alluded to.' They had no use for 
negroes except as slaves, and always regarded them 
with lofty and contemptuous indifference. The most 
serious damage inflicted outside of the station was in the 
loss of cattle which the settlers failed to secure during 
the truce, and which furnished the fresh meat supply of 
the savages. 

And so ended the last investment that Boonesborough 
was to experience, one which Boone characterized as 
"a dreadful siege which threatened death in every form," 
one of the longest that the unstable and impatient 
Indians ever attempted, and one of the most curious 
of the military episodes of the American Revolution. If 
DeQuindre was in earnest, why was no attempt made 
by such a force to scale the stockade? Why was the 
work of many days devoted to a mine, when scaling- 
ladders for a ten-foot wall could have been made of 

exaggerated, especially those made in old age, and must be estimated 
accordingly. The British story that the besiegers, exposed as they fre- 
quently were, had only two killed and three wounded (see Haldimand 
manuscript) sounds like some of the above-mentioned inflated statements. 
' Peck. 



Boonesborough 103 

young saplings and deer or cattle thongs in one after- 
noon? How much were the French-Canadian colleagues 
of the Indians influenced in the conduct of this siege by 
that sympathy for the Americans which was then so strong 
in Hamilton's department ? The records of the time 
afford no answer. Neither of the principal leaders of the 
Indians long survived this famous siege. Black Fish, 
as we will see, closed his career the following May. 
DeQuindre barely survived the Revolutionary struggle, 
dying in the spring of 1784, at the age of forty-one. 
He was a trusted adherent of the British to the end of 
the war." 

The backs of the besieging Indians were hardly turned 
on Boonesborough before Montgomery and the young 
dare-devil " Butler " (Kenton) popped into it, their horse- 
stealing expedition almost forgotten after their long wait- 
ing spell in the rear of the savage army. But Kenton 

I Dagniaux DeQuindre, as he signed himself, was a son of Colonel 
Louis C. DeQuindre, and was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1743. He 
was married, and his son Antoine and other descendants lived in Detroit. 
He was a Lieutenant in the Indian Department at Detroit, and was 
employed mainly among the Lake tribes. He died April 18, 1784, and 
was buried in the graveyard of the parish of Saint Anne. See Tanguay, 
records of Saint Anne, and Haldimand manuscript. We are indebted to 
the accomplished investigator, C. M. Burton, Esquire, of Detroit, for data 
and for the copy of DeQuindre's autograph used in this publication, and 
which was taken from an original written only a few months before the 
Boonesborough siege. 



I04 Boonesborough 

was gone again in a few days — gone to get captured — 
and did not see the fort again until the next summer. 
He was fortunate enough to be purchased from the 
Indians by Peter Douiller, who did not let bad luck at 
Boonesborough keep him from being kind to the prisoner 
from "Kentuck." 

A few days after the siege the news came to Boones- 
borough that the Holston company of eighty men, which 
had been looked for with such intense anxiety, was at 
last approaching, and a runner met it at Rockcastle 
River and conducted it to the station.' The cause of its 
heart-sickening delay is not of record. The men 
remained in Kentucky several weeks, and doubtless had 
something to do with hastening the final departure of the 
Indian force, which did not leave the country until its 
scattered detachments had ravaged and pillaged about 
the other stations.^ 

A sad echo of the siege shows that poor human 
nature is about the same in the rough log fort as in the 
luxurious palace. Captain Boone just had time to get 
fairly rested from his exhaustive service when he had a 

'Carr's Narrative in " Indian Battles," and Colonel John Bowman. 

^ Bowman's letter to Clark. It seems probable that Black Fish's war- 
riors did not recross the Ohio until about the last of September, 1778, as 
Hamilton does not mention DeQuindre's return until October 14th of that 
year. (See Haldimand manuscript.) 



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Boonesborough 105 

summons served on him to attend a court-martial' at 
Logan's Station, at which Colonel Callaway and, appar- 
ently. Captain Ben Logan charged him with treasonable 
attempts to aid the British — in surrendering the salt- 
makers, in undertaking the Paint Lick expedition, and in 
favoring the peace negotiations at Boonesborough. 
Boone showed to the entire satisfaction of the court that 
all the acts mentioned were patriotic, and that his con- 
duct at both the salt-camp and the treaty conference 
were deceptions and stratagems necessitated by the 
emergencies of war, and practiced solely for the advan- 
tage of the settlers and in defense of the fort. He was 
not only completely exonerated by the court, but his 
conduct was further endorsed, for shortly after he was 
commissioned a Major. A competent authority,' who 
thoroughly investigated this matter, attributes the charges 
to "some unfounded prejudice." Boone now seized the 
opportunity, while no unusual danger threatened the set- 
tlements and while the weather was fine, to start back 
to North Carolina for his family. He left Boonesbor- 

' Manuscript Narrative of Daniel Trabue, who was present at the trial, 
and who is the only authority for the statement. Trabue was a native of 
Virginia, and a man of intelligence and character. He came to Kentucky 
in the spring of 1778, and first settled at Logan's Station, but afterward 
was a well-known resident of Adair County, Kentucky, where he died in 
1840 at the age of eighty. His Narrati.-e was written in 1827. 

^The late Lyman C. Draper. 

15 



io6 Boonesborough 

ough early in October, expecting soon to return, but the 
train of sorrows and misfortunes that had already begun 
to sadden his life greatly delayed him. He seems to 
have made a short business trip to Kentucky the next 
year, but it is certain that he did not come back to stay 
until the second summer after the siege. 

Late this fall there came to the settlement a reminder 
of its so-called Colonial days in the shape of news that 
the General Assembly had again, and this time formally 
and definitely, declared void the Henderson purchases 
from the Cherokees,' and also in compensation for its 
efforts and expense in the settlement of the same had 
granted to the Company an extensive tract of land on 
the waters of the Ohio and Green rivers in the County 
of Kentucky.^ But to the settlers, so tried and troubled, 
the formal announcement of the dissolution of even so 
grand a scheme as that of Transylvania, long practically 
accomplished anyhow, caused no sensation. 

After this last siege Boonesborough but slowly recu- 
perated. Never in any one season yet had the Indians 
inflicted so much damage on the Kentucky settlements' 
as in 1778. It was the hardest year Boonesborough had 
experienced. 

' See Resolutions, Appendix Z. 
"See Act, Appendix I. 
3 Bowman's letter. 



Boonesborough 107 

But the battle-scarred station was now to be a little 
shielded from the savage storm. Clark's wonderful 
march, which resulted, on the 24th of February, 1779, in 
the surrender of the astonished Hamilton and the 
recapture of Vincennes, inspired immigration anew, and 
before the spring of that year was over settlers had 
planted themselves once more on the north side of the 
Kentucky River, and block-houses and stockaded cabins 
had arisen between Boonesborough and the Indian coun- 
try beyond the Ohio. Patterson and his men, who estab- 
lished Lexington, went from Harrodsburg, but the found- 
ers of Bryan's Station, the company under John Grant 
and William Ellis, who settled Grant's Station, and the 
bands for Strode's, Martin's, and Ruddle's all seem to have 
gone by way of Boonesborough. It was about this time, 
too, that Squire Boone, who had recovered from the 
wound in his shoulder, set out with a little company and 
established his station on Clear Creek, near the present 
town of Shelbyville. Urged by their necessities and 
encouraged by a prospect of at least temporary immu- 
nity from invasion, the settlers about Boonesborough 
made unusual efforts to clear and cultivate the land, 
devoting by far the greatest part of it to corn. The 
crops, as often before, were in many cases made in com- 
mon by companies organized for the purpose. A con- 



io8 Boonesborough 

tract was signed, directors elected, and the members 
appeared every morning at the sound of a conch or beat 
of a drum, some to work in the field and others to 
guard those who did work. A member failing to comply 
with the contract forfeited his claim to the crop. A list 
of the members of one of these companies is preserved.' 
If Boonesborough had a regular commandant at this 
time it was probably Captain John Holder, who had been 
one of its leading spirits since early in 1776, when he 
came in from Stafford County, Virginia. He certainly 
commanded the company which constituted Boones- 
borough 's quota this year (1779) to the unfortunate 
expedition of Colonel John Bowman against the Shawa- 
nese. Fortunately the roll of his company is still extant.^ 
Holder's men left Boonesborough about the middle of 
May 3 and camped e7i route at Lexington, then only a 
block-house six weeks old."* They were destined to feel 
again the quality of their persistent foeman, Black Fish, 

' The list includes Benjamin White, Jesse Peake, James Anthony, 
Nathaniel Hart, John Cartwright, Robert Cartwright, George Maddern, 
Nicholas Anderson, John Harper, Peter Harper, William Johnson, Whitson 
George, Edward Hall, William Hall, John Kelley, Edward Williams, and 
Jesse Oldham. (U. S. Hist. Register.) 

^ See Appendix W. 

3 That Marshall and other early historians plainly err in giving the 
month as July is shown by Captain Henry Bird's letter of June 9, 1779, 
in Haldimand manuscript, and by depositions of members of the expedition. 

■• Located on southwest corner of Main and Mill streets. Butler, note, 
page 1 01, and statements of its founders to William Leavy. 



Boonesborough 109 

who smote the outnumbered Kentuckians hip and thigh. 
But it was the old chief's last campaign. He was badly 
wounded, and, though successful, surrendered to get the 
. benefit of a white surgeon, which, owing to the confusion 
and exigencies of the retreat, he failed to receive, causing 
the wound to prove fatal.' After the manner of his 
people, he gloried that he was allowed to yield up his 
soul to the Great Spirit in a time of victory. 

Education was not forgotten even in these perilous 
days, and while the pioneers were fighting the Shawanese, 
pioneer children were at their lessons in a log cabin of 
Boonesborough fort, where one of the earliest schools of 
the troubled wilderness was conducted by Joseph Doni- 
phan.' The young teacher had come out only a few 
months before from Stafford County, Virginia, from whence 
other Boonesborough settlers had migrated, so that he 
felt at home. He had an average attendance of seven- 
teen pupils during this summer. One of the McAfees, 
who had now returned to Kentucky, seems also to have 
taught in Boonesborough a while this season before the 
erection of their permanent station. ^ 

" Bradford. 

^'This pioneer teacher died in 1813. He was the father of Colonel 
A. W. Doniphan, who made the famous march to Chihuahua during the 
Mexican War. 

3 McAfee's Station was established in November, 1779. 



no Boonesborough 

The stream of immigrants that began to pour into 
the country in the spring of 1779 steadily increased, and 
Boonesborough became, for a while at least, the busiest 
post in Virginia's remotest county. It was a stopping- 
place not only of constantly arriving companies of settlers, 
traders, and land speculators, who came in with their 
long trains of loaded pack-horses over the Wilderness 
Road, but of many such as returned after coming by 
water, going back from necessity by the land route, as a 
struggle against the current of the Ohio in the "dug- 
outs " and other rude floating craft of the day was not to 
be thought of. The old fort was too small to accommo- 
date the newcomers, a municipal government was needed, 
immigrants clamored for a better way of crossing the 
river than the risky and uncertain one of fording, which 
often occasioned long and expensive delays, and the 
inhabitants, strengthened and encouraged, proceeded to 
enlarge their borders, to lay off additional lots, to name 
contemplated streets, and to petition the Virginia Assem- 
bly to duly incorporate the place and grant it a ferry. 
The petition was complied with in October, when the 
Assembly passed ' ' An Act for establishing the town of 
Boonsborough in the County of Kentuckey,"' and one is 

' Henning's Statutes at Large, Volume X, page 134. See Appendix III. 
Several of the names in the Act are doubtless improperly spelt — "Boons- 
borough " certainly is. 



H 

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Boonesborough m 

reminded of the great increase of immigration to the 
new country by the statement in the bill that the town 
is established "for the reception of traders." In addition 
to the land included in the town site, six hundred and 
forty acres adjoining it were allowed for "a common." 
The trustees appointed were "Richard Callaway, Charles 
Mims Thruston, Levin Powell, Edmund Taylor, James 
Estre, Edward Bradley, John Kennedy, David Gist, 
Pemberton Rollins, and Daniel Boon."' The keeping of 
the ferry, from the newly incorporated town across ' ' Ken- 
tucky" River to the land opposite, now in Clark County, 
was granted with its emoluments to Richard Callaway, 
and the toll was set at "three shillings each for man or 
horse." Quite a number of log cabins were erected out- 
side the stockade at Boonesborough this year, but the 
fort itself was unchanged and kept up as usual. 

Thanks partly to the inactivity of the Indians, by far 
the largest crop of corn yet raised in the region about 
the station was made this season, fortunately for the 
immigrants who continued to push into the country 
until winter weather blockaded the routes. One of the 

' Boone's name is incorrectly given in this charter, just as it was after- 
ward by a strange oversight by Filson. The signature to Boone's letter of 
April I, 1775, to Henderson, which was long in the possession of James 
Hall, the historical author, gives his name plainly as " Boone," and all the 
original autographs of the famous woodsman or facsimiles of them that 
the writer has ever seen show the name with the final "e." 



112 Boonesborough 

late trains was headed by Colonel Callaway, who had 
been serving as a representative of Kentucky County 
in the General Assembly of Virginia. He brought in 
a good supply of lead and plenty of gun-flints for the 
garrison, but only a small quantity of powder, as that 
material was badly needed just then by the Continental 
troops of the seaboard. His company consisted of forty 
mounted men, with as many pack-horses. Since the 
passage the preceding May of the famous land law there 
had been no trouble in getting an escort through the 
wilderness for immigrants or stores, as the fever was 
raging in the old communities, in spite of the war, to 
secure some of the fertile acres of Kentucky, and every 
opportunity, including escort duty, was seized to get to 
them. After a short rest at Boonesborough the home- 
hunters scattered out on the lonely trails and were swal- 
lowed up in the vast expanse of leafless woods. But some 
of them were back at the station by the i8th of Decem- 
ber, increasing the crowd of settlers and speculators 
who had eagerly gathered to attend the land court which 
opened there on that day.' The crowd that "cabined" 
or camped by the river while the court was in session 
included many a veteran of the French and Indian War, 
and claims on military bounties were frequent among the 

' Marshall. 



Boonesborozigk 113 

numerous ones for settlement and pre-emption rights. 
Boone, who seems to have hurried back to attend this 
court, probably reached the settlement the last of Decem- 
ber, after the court had adjourned, for he is quoted as 
entering land on the Commissioners' books a few days 
after, while the court was being held at Bryan's Station.' 
He left for Richmond ' to buy land warrants just as soon 
as he could raise some money on his httle property. 

The gunpowder that Colonel Callaway had brought 
in was spun out as long and as carefully as possible, but 
it was nearly exhausted before the spring of 1780 opened, 
and there was no Daniel Boone present to make more. 
The garrison was getting nervous when "Uncle" Monk, 
an intelligent negro slave who belonged at Estill's Station, 
a few miles away, came over to Boonesborough to visit 
his wife, whose owner Hved there. Monk not only volun- 
teered to make a supply of powder, but to the relief of 
everybody he did it,^ and was highly regarded and favored 
for it. Monk had learned the art at an exposed settlement 
in the valley of Virginia. He exercised it several times 
after this at the stations south of the Kentucky. 

The unusual amount of corn that had been raised about 
Boonesborough not only prevented much suffering and 

' Depositions. 

'The capital of Virginia had been removed from Williamsburg to Rich- 
mond the preceding October. 
^ N. Hart, junior. 

16 



114 B oonesborough 

anxiety during the winter, but was a source of no little 
profit to the inhabitants in the spring of 1780, for the 
demand for grain was then urgent. It was partly to secure 
a supply of this indispensable staple that, about the 
first of March, ' brought back to the station once more its 
former official head and de facto Governor of Transylvania, 
Judge Richard Henderson. The affairs of the Company 
had energetically engaged him ever since he had left 
Boonesborough, and it was mainly through his efforts that 
the Virginia Assembly had granted to the Company the 
great tract of Kentucky land below the mouth of Green 
River. He was now by recent appointment a commissioner 
on the part of North Carolina to run the boundary line 
between that State and Virginia, and was promoting the 
settlement of the Company's lands on the Lower Cum- 
berland, which were within the supposed boundary of 
North Carolina. Just now breadstuff was badly needed 
at half-starving French Lick,^ the future Nashville — the 
stockaded nucleus of Henderson's second colony. His 
stay at Boonesborough lasted but five days, and his trip 
through Kentucky was necessarily a hurried one ; but he 
saw enough of settlements and population to convince 
him that he had not overestimated the future value of 

' Haywood. 

'James Robertson seems to have made this settlement in the interest 
of the Transylvania Company, 



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BoonesdoroMgh 115 

the great prize that had sHpped from the Company's grasp. 
The corn he bought cost two hundred dollars per bushel ' 
in Continental currency, and was shipped the entire dis- 
tance by water in log perogues,' which made their long 
and crooked way down the Indian-haunted Kentucky and 
the Ohio and up the Cumberland to French Lick Station. 
The unique little fleet was in charge of Major W. B. 
Smith, whose connection with Boonesborough now ceased.' 
This visit of Henderson's was the last he ever made to 
his famous log "capital." His years thereafter were few,' 

' Nat. Hart, junior. 

" After his arrival at French Lick, Smith assisted Henderson in the 
interstate survey. He finally settled about sixteen miles from the site 
of the present city of Henderson, Kentucky, on a tract of land which 
he received from John Luttrell, of the Transylvania Company, in payment 
for services. His residence was near what was afterward known as "Smith's 
Ferry," mouth of Green River, and there he died in October, 1818, at 
the age of eighty. He never married. (Draper.) 

3 Soon after this visit to Boonesborough Henderson opened an office at 
French Lick for the sale of the Company's lands. In 178 1 he was a 
member of the North Carolina House of Commons, and in 1783 his 
Company received from that State two hundred thousand acres of land 
in Powell's Valley in compensation for settlement and expenses of 1775. 
About that time (1783) he retired to his farm, located in the fork of 
Anderson Swamp and Big Nut Bush Creeks, about seven miles north- 
east of Williamsboro, in Granville (now Vance) County, North Carolina. 
Much of the farm is now owned by a connection, W. G. B. Snead, Esquire. 
Here Judge Henderson died January 30, 1785, in his fiftieth year, and 
here he was buried in the family lot about a quarter of a mile southeast 
of his residence, and only a few steps from the burial-place of the adjoining 
(Stamper) farm. No stone or memorial of any kind marks the grave of 
one of the most enlightened and enterprising characters of colonial North 
Carolina and pioneer Kentucky, and no portrait of him exists. Fortunately 



ii6 BoonesborotLgh 

and they were saddened by the failure of his great plans. 
Even as late as ten years after his death the Transylvania 
Company made an ineffectual appeal to Congress for 
redress of alleged wrongs.' 

In this spring of 1780 the Indians made up for lost 
time. Their scouts and man-hunters were in Kentucky 
before the snow was fairly gone, and tragedies commenced 
again. Early in March Colonel Callaway began prepara- 
tions to establish his ferry, and on the 8th of the month 
while he, Pemberton Rawhngs (or Rollins), and three 
negro men were building a ferryboat on Canoe Ridge, 
about a mile above Boonesborough, a volley of rifle shots 
was heard, and shortly after one of the negroes rushed, 
panting and terrified, into the settlement with the news 
that the boat-builders had been attacked by Indians. A 
party of riflemen, headed by Captain Holder, and including 
young Bland Ballard, then just commencing his career as 
a scout and spy, ^ galloped to the rescue, but were too 
late. Colonel Callaway had been instantly killed, ^ scalped, 
and robbed of most of his clothing. Rawlings had been 

his residence is preserved. Some years after his death it was removed to 
Williamsboro, and now, though modernized, stands as a historic personal 
reminder of the head of the most unique of the Colonial Governments of 
America. 

' See Appendix IV for the Company's Memorial to Congress in 1795. 

'^ Ballard was then about nineteen, and had been in Kentucky but a 
few months. 

3N. Hart, junior, and Draper. 



Boonesborough 117 

shot down, tomahawked in the back of the neck, and 
scalped, but, though mortally wounded, was still alive, 
and the two negroes were prisoners, destined for savage 
slavery. They were heard of no more. The Indians 
who, almost as a matter of course, were Shawanese, and 
who successfully eluded pursuit, had evidently watched 
the movements of the boat-builders, and fired with impunity 
from a nearby place of concealment. There was sudden, 
crushing grief in two homes, and sorrow throughout the 
settlement as the stricken forms were tenderly brought 
in, and there was even deeper gloom soon after, for the 
terribly wounded Rawlings died before the setting of the 
sun. The gallant old leader and his brave lieutenant 
were buried in one grave back of the fort they had 
helped to defend, and where the soil they loved overlooks 
the beautiful river that is consecrated to the memory of 
the pioneers. Colonel Callaway's hair was noticeable 
both for its length and for its peculiar shade of gray, 
and when the scalp was carried by the exulting savages 
to their town across the Ohio it was recognized with 
horror and sadness by Joseph Jackson, one of Boone's 
unfortunate party of salt-boilers of the Blue Licks, who 
was still a captive. 

Anxieties were added to griefs as the days went by 
at Boonesborough, but the greatest of them all was occa- 



ii8 Boonesborough 

sioned by the news brought by Abraham Chaplain and 
one Hendricks, who had escaped from Wyandot captivity 
about the middle of May, and tattered and famished had 
been welcomed by the pitying settlers. They reported 
that the Indians and Canadians were assembling in unusual 
force to attack Boonesborough ; that they would certainly 
move in about four weeks, and that this time they would 
come with cannon, against which the wooden forts would 
be utterly helpless. The information, reliable as it was 
startling, was dispatched at once to Colonel John Bowman 
in a letter signed by E. Worthington, Ben Roberts, James 
Patton, and Edward Bulger,' who, in earnestly request- 
ing more militia to repel the invasion, declared, with 
patriotic fervor, that such was ' ' the humble prayer of 
this garrison and of every other son of liberty." Heavy 
as this news was, there is no data now extant to show 
that any steps were taken to meet this the greatest 
danger that had yet threatened the Kentucky settlements. 
In the absence of such data it looks like there was the 
same remarkable failure on the part of the authorities as 
to scout service and ordinary military precautions that in 
another invasion, two years after this, brought such scath- 
ing rebukes and stinging sarcasms from George Rogers 

' The original letter was in the possession of the late John B. Bowman, 
of Kentucky University. The fact that this warning was given is strangely 
omitted in all accounts of this invasion by Kentucky historians. 



Boonesborough 119 

Clark." One little colony — that under Grant and Ellis 
at Grant's Station — did make a wise and timely with- 
drawal,' but it was the only one to do so. In spite of 
the warning a month in advance, the invading force under 
Captain Bird^ was allowed to reach the heart of Ken- 
tucky not only unresisted but undiscovered, and, on the 
2 2d of June, Ruddle's and Martin's Stations succumbed to 
the enemy's artillery. The swift tidings of the actual pres- 
ence of cannon, even more than the report of the disaster 
itself, was almost a forecast of doom to Boonesborough. 
The once redoubtable fort looked suddenly weak to the 
settlers, but in spite of that there was a quick and instinct- 
ive rush for it by all outsiders near it. Only once — when 
the blazing arrows of Black Fish struck the station — 
had the pioneers felt so hopeless, and the panic reached 
its height when marauders from the Indian army sur- 
rounded Strode's Station, "i across the river and only a few 

'The Girty and Caldwell expedition of August, 1782. (See Virginia 
State Papers, Volume III, page 385.) 

^ Grant and Ellis both returned home by way of Boonesborough and 
re-entered the Continental Army, but both located permanently in Ken- 
tucky in the winter of 178 1. (See The Traveling Church.) 

^McBride says (page 190) that Bird was from Virginia originally; 
that his father returned to England when the Revolution broke out and 
obtained a commission for his son in the British army. Captain Bird's 
retreat seems to have been due to his humanity. Kentuckians of that 
day could thank their stars that his American training had given him a 
horror of savage barbarity. 

■• Strode's Station was about two miles from what is now Winchester, 
Clark County, Kentucky. 



I20 Boonesborough 

miles away. But they came without field pieces, mainly 
to steal horses, and soon disappeared, and the relief at 
Boonesborough was inexpressible when it waS discovered 
that the entire invading force had strangely retreated 
without striking another blow, when the whole interior of 
the country was at its mercy. 

It was about this time that the simple-hearted and 
uncomplaining Boone returned to Boonesborough' from 
North Carolina with his wife and family, bereft of his 
little fortune* and saddened by domestic troubles. The 
population of the station had greatly changed during his 
absence, most of his old friends were missing, and the 
settlement was becoming entirely too crowded for the 
inveterate hunter and lover of the free and lonely woods. 
But he made his home at Boonesborough until shortly 
after another misfortune overtook him, the killing of his 
brother Edward by the Indians in October at fateful Blue 
Licks, when he moved out with his family, a few loaded 
pack-horses, and his dogs, crossed the river and located in 
what is now Fayette County, at a spot about five miles 

' He had been in Kentucky probably less than two weeks when he was 
summoned to serve on the Jury of Escheat at Lexington Station (July i, 
1780), when lands of certain British subjects were confiscated. 

' He had been robbed of his own money and of funds entrusted to him 
the preceding February while e?t route to Richmond to purchase land war- 
rants. See Morehead's Address for Thomas Hart's letter exonerating him, 
and page 136 of Marshall, Volume I. 



Boonesdorottgk 121 

northwest of Boonesborough, near where several buffalo 
traces conveniently crossed each other, and on a stream 
that has ever since been known as Boone's Creek. Boone 
inherited the tract on which he now settled from his 
eldest brother, Israel Boone,' then recently deceased, and 
who seems to have briefly "adventured" to that neigh- 
borhood about 1776, shortly after the establishment of 
Boonesborough. Boone's Station,^ as the new log and 
stockaded home of Daniel Boone was immediately known, 
stood, it is claimed, on the land at the junction of Boone's 
Creek and Boffman's Creek, still called on that account 
"the station pasture, "and from this little wooden fort he 
sallied forth on many a hunting and surveying trip, to 
many an adventure with the Indians, and to the disas- 
trous conflict in which he lost another son. 

Thanks to the confidence restored by Clark's Piqua 
expedition, the number of settlers so increased that in 

'Deed Book "D," page 143, Fayette Circuit Court and History of 
Fayette County, Kentucky. 

'The site of Boone's Station is now included in the Garrett Watts 
farm. Boffman's Creek was named after Captain John Boffman, who raised 
corn in that locality in 1776. The company of immigrants he came out 
with was defeated by the Indians on Skaggs' trace. We use the name as 
given by one of his descendants (see 18 10 edition of Hardin's Reports, 
page 348), but it is also spelt " Baughman " in Fayette County records. 
Boone's Station was succeeded, so to speak, by a little settlement that 
sprang up near it at the crossing of the buffalo traces, which fact gave it 
the name of " Cross Plains," but it lost its identity shortly after 1826, when 
the present town of Athens was started about half a mile away. 

17 



122 Boonesborougk 

November of this year (1780) Kentucky County was 
divided by the Virginia Legislature into three counties, 
which were given the names of shining lights of the 
heroic struggle then in progress — Jefferson, Fayette, and 
Lincoln. Boonesborough now found itself in the most 
populous of the new counties, Lincoln, and Daniel Boone 
became the lieutenant -colonel of the county in which he 
then resided, Fayette." 

The Indians now gave the people a rest, but the 
winter that followed was as terrible as the savages. It 
commenced unusually soon with a succession of snow- 
storms, followed by the coldest weather the settlers had 
ever experienced. The snow that banked the ground 
was locked in ice, the trees seemed made of marble and 
glass. The streams were solid. The Kentucky River 
was lost in snow, and the transformed hills opposite the 
fort were as white, as desolate, and as beautiful as the 
towering ice-packs of the Polar Sea. The very firewood 
had to be chopped out of encircling ice, and every thing 
that wild animals could eat was hidden in snow and shut 
in by ice. And this desperate and apparently intermin- 
able weather continued without a thaw until the spring 
of 1 78 1, and with all the suffering that such an experi- 
ence comprehends. Not only did forest animals freeze 

' Calendar Virginia State Papers. 



Boones borough 123 

to death, but cattle and hogs about the station, and many 
that did not die in that way perished of starvation. The 
settlers did manage with great exertions and misery to 
keep from freezing, but food was so scarce that they 
barely succeeded in keeping hfe in their bodies, for the 
corn gave out, and for weeks they had to exist on wild 
game, as in 1776, except that now it was so wretchedly 
poor as to be almost useless. The name given this 
unprecedented season, "The Hard Winter,"' but mildly 
expresses the terrors of it. 

Miserable, however, as were the cooped -up settlers 
during this memorable time, they did not forget to sympa- 
thize with the distant Continentals, and they especially 
exulted in the signal success at King's Mountain of their 
old friends and neighbors of Watauga and the Holston. 
Time and again at night, as they huddled close to their 
cabin fires, did the subject come up, and it was only 
supplanted at last by the news of the Battle of the 
Cowpens, which did not reach them until nearly a month 
after that British defeat. 

'Authors differ as to the date of "The Hard Winter," some, with 
apparent correctness, placing it the season before this. We follow Boone 
mainly because he seems to have been the only authority actually in Ken- 
tucky at the time who gave any thing like contemporary testimony about 
it. If The Hard Winter occurred the preceding season, one is puzzled 
to account for the evident abundance of corn, at Boonesborough at least, 
in March, 1780. 



124 Boonesboroitgh 

The patriots of the backwoods were now more hope- 
ful of their country, and they were encouraged both by 
the auspicious opening of the spring of 1781 and the 
influx of immigrants that distinguished it ; but the gloom 
of Indian prospect brightened not at all, for savage war 
bands, generally small, but occasionally important, were 
striking somewhere in Kentucky in 1781 from the time 
they attacked McAfee's Station in May until winter came 
again. Boonesborough barely escaped a visit about the 
middle of September from probably the strongest and 
certainly the most successful of these parties, comprising 
Hurons and Miamis, who, under the noted Brant, had 
just defeated Floyd at Long Run.' The Indians were 
urged by Alexander McKee, who accompanied them, to 
march against the hated fort "on the Kentuck," but the 
fickle and elated savages were so anxious to celebrate 
their victories that they scattered at once to their vil- 
lages. Boonesborough was unassailed this time in force, 
but few indeed were the weeks that followed when minor 
tragedies did not bring sorrow to some dweller within 
her gates or to some family within sound of her rifles. 
All through this fall, and especially at the gathering in 
of the crops, the avenging or marauding Indian was at 

' Haldimand manuscripts. Letters of McKee and Thompson of Sep- 
tember, 178 1. 



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Boonesborough 125 

his deadly work, and the very Christmas-tide was ush- 
ered in with mortal combats and savage murders, for it 
was in December that some of the Pennsylvanians, who 
had located so close to Boonesborough,' were ambus- 
caded, and that the heroic Mrs. Duree took the place of 
her fallen husband and defended both the living and the 
dead of her desolated cabin. Absorbed utterly in the 
desperate struggle for the possession of a home and for 
life itself, the Kentucky pioneer had but little time to 
give to the preservation of the deeds of daring and of 
blood that were almost commonplace in their perpetual 
occurrence, and this is especially true of the year 1781. 
There is no record extant that conveys any adequate 
idea of the trials and the tragedies of that eventful sea- 
son. Even the surrender of Cornwallis, which made the 
whole Atlantic seaboard exult in the certainty of peace, 
seemed only to incite the British and the savages of the 
Northwest to still greater exertions to sweep the 
"rebels" of the frontier from the face of the earth, and 
the spring of 1782 found the Kentucky settlers penned 
up as closely as ever in their cramped, crowded, and 
monotonous forts. 

On the 19th of March of this year all Boonesborough 
was stirred up at the sight of two or three logs, united 

'At White Oak Station, about a mile away. 



126 Boonesborough 

in the crudest way, drifting down the Kentucky and past 
the station. To the inexperienced the incident was too 
trifling for a second thought, but to the veteran woods- 
man the Httle raft betrayed the presence of Indians, from 
whom it had accidentally slipped away as they were cross- 
ing the river. It was, in fact, the first announcement of 
that incursion of Wyandots which resulted in Estill's 
defeat, which was probably the most equal, the most 
stubbornly contested, and the most desperate of the 
minor engagements of pioneer Kentucky.' And there 
was more grief at Boonesborough and at every station in 
the region about it. 

The season of 1782 had opened, as it was to close, in 
blood. All during the planting-time the fields were 
haunted by straggling Indians, and such crops as were 
raised were made while contending both with them and 
with a drouth that extended from the last of April until 
late in July. But none of these things kept back the 
land-hungry immigrants, who came on in rapidly increas- 
ing numbers. The savages were now not only more 
seriously alarmed than ever, but they were incited with 
redoubled energy by the despairing British, who sought 
at once to regain their lost advantages and thus, if not 
already too late, to prevent the vast and magnificent 

'Marshall's Reports, page 304, and Cists' Miscellany for 1845. 



Boonesborough 127 

domain of the West from passing, by a pending treaty,' 
forever from the British Crown. Once more a formida- 
ble force of Indians and Canadians was called together, 
and in August, under the leadership of Girty and Cald- 
well, they swarmed across the Ohio in a last, supreme 
effort to destroy the Kentucky forts.' Aiming first at 
the capture of the two principal ones on the "frontier," 
Bryan's Station and Lexington, by strategy they sought 
to draw away their garrisons to the south side of the 
Kentucky River through demonstrations of decoy parties 
sent in advance of the main body to the neighborhood 
of Boonesborough. 

It was at this time that Hoy's Station, ^ only a few 
miles south of Boonesborough, was threatened, and the 
Indians, both in coming and going, left bloody tracks. 
Two at least of their victims were identified with Boones- 
borough. One was Captain William Buchanan, < killed 
while with Holder's men in pursuit of one of the decoy 
bands, and the other was Colonel Nathaniel Hart, way- 

"The Treaty of Paris. England would have welcomed any pretext 
during the consideration of this much-delayed instrument to prevent the 
absolute cession to the United States of the territory conquered by Clark. 
Influences were at work in Paris at this very time to that end. 

"The writer has given an account of this invasion in his "Story of 
Bryan's Station." 

3 Located close to the present village of Foxtown, Madison County, 
Kentucky. 

^ Judge William Chenault. 



128 Boonesborough 

laid in the vicinity of White Oak Station while out 
hunting for his horse, unconscious of the presence of an 
enemy. The savages in an attempt to take him prisoner 
broke his thigh, and finding that it would be impossible 
on that account to take him along with them they shot 
the helpless sufferer through the heart with a rifle that 
was placed so close to his breast that the powder burned 
his skin. In addition to this he was tomahawked and 
scalped, and in the turmoil of the incursion it was two 
days before his poor mutilated body was found.' 

Holder was defeated, and another and an apparently 
serious demonstration was made against Hoy's Station. 
Boone hurried across the river to Boonesborough to assume 
command of the riflemen ordered to the rehef of the 
threatened post ; William Ellis' was just about to join him 
with mounted men that had assembled at Boone's Station ; 
the Lexington garrison was well on its way to the Ken- 
tucky River, and the ruse of the Indian leaders was almost 
a success when their real object was discovered, and soon 
the entire fighting force of all the settlements was on the 
march to the relief of Bryan's Station. Boone led off a 
company that had gathered at Boonesborough. It was 

'Jesse Benton's letter of December 4, 1782, to Thomas Hart. 

° Ellis' Station was convenient to Boone's, being located near the present 
Pine Grove. A few hours after this, Captain Ellis led the cavalry charge at 
Bryan's Station. 



Boonesborough 129 

the last time that "the knight errant of the wood" sal- 
hed forth with men at arms from the pioneer castle he 
had done so much to render famous. During the next 
few days the only defenders of Boonesborough were one 
or two of its oldest men, the women and the children, and, 
with the exception of a little cooking, domestic employ- 
ments ceased. Details of women, rifle in hand, did 
guard duty day and night, and during that memorable 
period none of the inmates of the stockade ever slept 
except as they had watt,hed, fully clothed and ready for 
any emergency. The anxious days only ended in dark- 
ness, for then came the crowning disaster of that year 
of pioneer defeats, the Battle of the Blue Licks, the last 
battle of the American Revolution,' when Boonesborough, 
with all Kentucky, was overwhelmed with grief. And 
the consternation was as great as the grief, for it was 
feared that the savages "would bring another campaign 
into the country," and that, said Boone in an appealing 
letter to the Governor of Virginia, written at Boone's Sta- 

' Collins, by a singular error, places Loughry's defeat after the Battle 
of the Blue Licks ; but it has been plainly shown to have occurred on the 
24th of August, 1781 (see Anderson's Diary in Indiana H. S., Pamphlet 
No. 4), and the fight at Combahee Ferry, South Carolina, which took 
place August 27, 1782, General Greene himself called "a paltry little 
skirmish." Whatever may be said as to "the last blood shed in the field," 
the fact is evident that the engagement at the Blue Licks on the 19th of 
August, 1782, was the last battle of the Revolution. 

18 



I30 Boonesborough 

tion a few days after the defeat, ' ' would break up these 
settlements." Never since the ■ spring of 1775 had the 
pioneers come so near to abandoning Kentucky. They 
were in the depths of despair until electrified by a bugle- 
call from the indomitable Clark to invade the enemy's 
country. Two months were devoted to careful prepara- 
tions and to the march, and when at last, on the loth 
of November, they descended upon the haunts of the 
Miamis, the astonished savages fled without a fight ; their 
towns were burned to ashes, all their corn and winter 
stores were utterly destroyed, and the pioneers became 
their confident and defiant selves again. 

This blow and the progress of negotiations at Paris 
brought a quiet winter to the harassed frontier. But 
early in the spring of 1783, in spite of the assurances 
of peace, minor Indian outrages began again and contin- 
ued, and among them, and of especial interest to Boones- 
borough, were the killing of its former resident, John 
Floyd,' and the attempted capture of Boone, but no 

' Colonel Floyd had acted as Surveyor for the Transylvania Company. 
He was killed on the 12th of April, 1783, a short distance from his station 
on Beargrass. The settlements were not without their own superstitions 
at that time, for, according to Shane's pioneer notes, Floyd's wife did not 
want him to leave home, because the day before he started "a bird flew 
round his head seven times and flew off in the very direction he had to go, 
and that night a chunk of fire popped out and went by Samuel Aikin's 
gate." She said that if a personal enemy did not kill him the Indians 
would. 



Boonesborough 131 

serious expedition of the savages into Kentucky was ever 
again attempted. Boone's adventure was long recounted 
at his old stamping-ground. It seems the Shawanese 
still sighed for the companionship of their adopted brother, 
and four of them undertook to bring him back to his 
former Indian home. They haunted Boone's Station and 
caught him at last outside of it at work, says Peck, in 
his log tobacco barn, Boone submitted so good-naturedly 
that his delighted red kinfolks allowed him to go up into 
the loft of the barn, as he requested, "to get some fine 
tobacco to carry along." In a twinkling he sprang down 
upon them with an armful of dry tobacco that he scat- 
tered as he fell, and before the blinded and sputtering 
savages could recover themselves he was safe within his 
stockade.^ 

The preliminary articles of the Treaty of Paris had 
been signed at the beginning of the year,^ but it took two 
months for the news to creep to America, and then nearly 
another month for it to penetrate the Western wilderness. 
In the meanwhile Virginia's three terribly tried frontier 
counties had been erected into a separate district, per- 

' Boone's Station, near what is now Athens, was still the home of 
Boone in 1784, when he related the story of his life to Filson, and con- 
tinued to be his home until he left the State, ten or twelve years thereafter. 

'The prehminary treaty was signed January 20, 1783; a cessation of 
hostilities was formally declared by Congress the igth of the following 
April, and the final, definitive treaty was signed the 3d of the succeeding 
September. 



132 Boonesborough 

petuating the ancient Indian name Kentucky, and an 
unprecedented flood of hopeful settlers was pouring into 
the country. In April the long-looked-for tidings of the 
signing of the treaty reached Kentucky, and when at 
Boonesborough a mounted messenger rode into the stockade 
with the word "Peace" displayed upon his coonskin cap 
the welkin rang with the sounds of rejoicing, with hurrahs 
for "Washington and the Continental Congress," and 
with the songs of the Sons of Liberty, and far into the 
night a great bonfire blazed and volley after volley rang 
out from horse-pistols and flint-lock rifles. But the peace 
so ardently celebrated was far from coming at once in 
its fulness to the District of Kentucky as it came to the 
seaboard States, for the British posts located in the great 
Northwest, and whose surrender had been guaranteed, 
were long withheld and as long exerted a baleful influence 
upon the former savage allies of the Crown. But in spite 
of every obstacle the ' ' wilderness blossomed as the rose, " 
and henceforth from that day of rejoicing in April, 1783, 
the ponderous gates of the battle - scarred fort of Boones- 
borough were closed no more. Soon the great pickets 
between the cabins gave way to progress ; streets were 
opened, log houses increased, and the one-time stockaded 
little capital of the Colony of Transylvania became an 
open town. 



Boonesborough 133 

The War of the Revolution was over, and with it 
ended the tragic and romantic part of the story of Boones- 
borough that will be forever identified with the history of 
that struggle, and is of itself almost a history of the 
permanent settlement of Kentucky. 



In 1792, when Kentucky was admitted into the Union, 
Boonesborough was one of the largest towns in the State," 
was conspicuous for its shipments of the great tobacco 
crops' that were produced in the region surrounding it, 
and contested for the location there of the capital of the 
new Commonwealth. But it was soon left behind in the 
march of population and events. By 1810 it had declined 
to an obscure hamlet ; a little later on even its decreasing 
cabins had disappeared, the town site had become only 
a lonely part of a river farm, and Boonesborough was 

'Even in 1789, according to a report on "The Colony of Kentucky," 
made to Lord Dorchester at Quebec, a report slightly mixed in its topog- 
raphy, the statement was made that " Boonsburg, upon Red River, com- 
prehends upwards of a hundred and twenty houses." (See volume Canadian 
Archives published in 1890.) 

"The cultivation of tobacco, which began almost with the permanent 
settlement of Kentucky, was wonderfully increased when the Revolution 
ended, and had much to do with the close and wholesale clearing away of 
the timber in certain sections of the State. One flood in the Kentucky, 
that of 18 1 7, carried off more than three hundred thousand dollars' worth 
of the tobacco of the counties of Madison, Clark, and Jessamine that 
was warehoused on the river banks. 



134 B oonesborotigh 

reckoned among the towns of Kentucky that once had 
been.' 

One and only one institution survives that was estab- 
lished by the settlers of the place, and that figured 
familiarly in their lives. It is the picturesque old ferry, 
the oldest in Kentucky, and consecrated by the blood of 
its founders. The ferryboat is fashioned still exactly 
like its quaint and simple predecessors of the Revolution, 
and is polled across the river yet in the same primitive 
style as in the fighting days of Boone. No remnant of 
the battle-scared old fort remains. For nearly a century 
the plow has been busy where it stood, and year after 
year the tall corn has rustled and ripened above its site. 
Elevated as the fort ground is, it has not always, it is 
said, escaped the obliterating effects of great overflows of 
the Kentucky River,' and now the graves of such of the 
founders and defenders of the old stronghold as were 
buried within or near its wooden walls have long been 
leveled and lost to sight. The famous "Hollow," owing 

' Among the extinct or projected towns of Kentucky may be mentioned 
Leestown, a mile below Frankfort ; Saltsburg, at Bullitt's Lick ; Transyl- 
vania, at the mouth of Harrod's Creek; Port William, merged into Carrollton; 
Granville, named for the North Carolina county, and Lystra. Another was 
" Ohiopiomingo," whose title was to honor a beautiful river and a noble 
Indian ; but the name, though musical, ingenious, and magnificent, was 
about all there ever was of the town. 

°There was a great overflow of the river in the spring of 1894, and 
the water then is said to have risen twenty-five feet in Sycamore Hollow. 




THE FAMOUS OLD SYCAMORE. 



The only Surviving Witness of tlie Ri^^e and Fall of Boonesborough. 
I As it appeared in the Autumn of 1900.) 



Boonesborough 135 

to successive deposits from river floods,' is not nearly so 
deep as it was in the days of the pioneers, and, long 
undisturbed, it is thick with sycamores that have sprung 
up since the settlement died out, and once again the 
ancient haunt of the buffalo and the elk is a romantic 
and luxuriant wild. The mighty elm, whose majestic 
dome sheltered the first legislature and the first worship- 
ing assembly of a wilderness empire, and which witnessed 
one of the strangest episodes of the American Revolution, 
fell under the axe in 1828, and fell in all its stateliness 
and splendor. It was the most unique and precious his- 
torical monument in the whole domain of Kentucky, and 
was invested with a charm that the loftiest sculptured 
column could not possess. But hedged about and obscured 
as it has been by deposits from river floods, the sulphur 
■ water ' is there around which the wild animals of the 
wilderness gathered for unnumbered generations ; the Lick 

'The descriptions here given were written in November, igoo, when 
the writer made his last visit to Boonesborough, at which time also most 
of the views of its scenery and historic sites included in this volume were 
secured. 

^ Owing to the partial filling of the hollow, as already mentioned, the 
sulphur spring had to be surrounded by a wall, and, in time, it virtually 
became a well, in which shape it still exists. Many years ago an old 
musket barrel, unearthed on the place and a relic of the days of Indian 
investments, was fitted into this spring as a drinking tube, says Mr. H. S. 
Halley, whose boyhood was spent at Boonesborough, and to whom the 
writer is indebted for facts and courtesies. 



136 Boonesborough 

Spring still exists which, refreshed alike the Indian and 
the pioneer, and near it stands the last of the great 
sycamores ' that were there when the white men first 
invaded the vast solitude in which they grew. Its hoary 
old trunk, hollowed by time, decay, and the leaden storm 
of a Revolutionary conflict, is now a mere shell, within 
which four or five men could stand. It is the one soli- 
tary living thing still at Boonesborough that has felt the 
familiar touch of Boone and Henderson and Kenton ; that 
stood while the vanished fort was standing ; that partici- 
pated in the remarkable siege of 1778, and that has sur- 
vived the throngs of sturdy pioneers and painted savages 
that have gone the way of all the earth. An age has passed 
since Boonesborough echoed with the appalling war-cry of 
the Indian and the crack of the settlers' flintlock, and few 
sounds disturb it now but the dying clatter of railway 
trains that pass it by in the distance, the sighing of the 
wind as it bends the tall tops of a thousand sycamores, 
and the noises of a crossing at the ferry which come up 
indistinctly from the deep-down beautiful river, which 
once knew no other traveler but the red man and no 
other craft but his bark canoe. The whole place, upland 

" Of the three great sycamores that graced this spot a century and a 
quarter ago, one fell in 1873 and another in 1885. Both might have 
been preserved by timely efforts of the Commonwealth. 



Boonesborough 137 

and hollow, has all the sadness of a deserted village,' 
the melancholy charm of lonely nature, and the elo- 
quence of an historic past. It thrills the soul with a sug- 
gestion of that untouched wilderness that was as sublime 
as the ocean, of a hunting-ground that has never been 
surpassed, of that quickly shattered dream of Colonial 
wealth and feudal power, and of the heroic men and the 
heroic women who, unaided and forgotten, laid the foun- 
dation of a free and independent State. Boonesborough 
clusters thick with memories of that solitary log fort that 
was pelted with lead, blackened by fire, and stained with 
blood. It is rich with the romance of the Revolution 
and the romance of Indian warfare. It is hallowed by 
the sufferings of her settlers. It is consecrated by the 
ashes of her dead. It is ground immortalized that 

'Boonesborough, or, strictly speaking, the site of it, would now be 
described as being in Madison County, Kentucky, and located immediately 
on the south bank of the Kentucky River and between it and the close- 
by Richmond and Winchester turnpike. It is about two miles from the 
town of Ford, which is on the opposite side of the river in Clark County 
and on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, and the site of the fort is 
reached from that place by a picturesque country road which leads to the 
historic river, which is crossed at a ferry so close to the old settlement 
that it may itself be called a part of it. Ford is only a short ride by 
rail from Richmond, Winchester, and Lexington, Ky. Boonesborough is 
by turnpike twelve miles from Richmond, nine miles from Winchester, 
and about twenty miles from Lexington. It is about sixty miles by land 
from the mouth of the Kentucky River, and about one hundred and thirty 
miles from it by water. 



19 



138 Boonesborough 

should be owned, honored, and eternally cherished by the 
Commonwealth ' it cradled. 

'The writer would respectfully suggest that Boonesborough could be 
strikingly and most appropriately marked if the work were done in accord- 
ance with the eternal fitness of things. A log fort, stockade and all, 
could be built almost exactly similar to that of Boone and Henderson, as 
the plan of their station still exists. Such a realistic reminder of the 
life, the times, and the heroism of the Kentucky pioneers would, if suit- 
ably cared for, last for generations. In the center of this enclosure, 
suitably inscribed, could be a giant boulder from the bed of the Ken- 
tucky or from the Rockcastle River, an object which the settlers them- 
selves no doubt often saw, which was personally associated with them, 
and which would be virtually indestructible. A like great rock could 
mark the site of the famous elm in the famous hollow, and it would be 
about the only thing that could withstand the river floods. It strikes the 
writer that memorials of this kind would require but little attention, could 
be but little injured by relic hunters, and would be in harmony with the 
rugged virtues of the settlers and defenders of Boonesborough and with 
the solitude, the natural features, and the historic associations of the spot 
they immortalized. Of course these suggestions are based on the assump- 
tion that the ground would be the property either of the State or of some 
patriotic or memorial association. 



AUTHOR'S 



APPENDIX 



NOTES, DATA, 



HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS 



RELATING TO THE 



SUBJECT OF THIS VOLUME 



CONTENTS OF APPENDIX. 



PAGE 

A — The Name " Kentucky " 143 

B — Boone Before 1775 145 

C — Boone's First Attempt to Colonize Kentucky 146 

D — Proclamation of Governor Martin of North Carolina 147 

E — The Cherokee Deed to Henderson and Company 151 

F — Deposition of Charles Robertson 158 

G — Felix Walker's Narrative 161 

H — Boone's Letter of April i, 1775 168 

I — Henderson's Journal 169 

J — Proclamation of Lord Dunmore 181 

K — Extract from Henderson's Letter written en route to Kentucky.. 183 

L — Henderson's Letter from Boonesborough, June 12, 1775 ...... 184 

M — Letter to Patrick Henry from Henderson and Company 194 

N — Journal of House of Delegates of Transylvania Colony 196 

O — Proceedings of the Transylvania Proprietors 212 

P — Silas Deane's Letter to James Hogg 219 

Q — Hogg's Report of His Embassy to the Continental Congress ... 224 

R — Reply of John Williams, Agent, to the Harrodsburg Remonstrance 230 

S — Williams' Report of January, 1776, on Transylvania Affairs .... 232 

T — Survey Warrant of Henderson and Company 240 

U — Petition of Transylvanians to Virginia Convention 241 

V — Petition of Committee of West Fincastle 244 

W — Proclamation of Transylvania Company, June, 1776 248 

X — Capture of the Girls in July, 1776 — Extract from Floyd's Letter 249 

Y — The Bowman Letter on the Last Siege of Boonesborough 251 

Z — The Transylvania Purchase Declared Void 253 

I — Virginia's Land Grant to Henderson and Company 254 

n — Roll of Holder's Company for June, 1779 255 

in — Act Establishing Town of Boonesborough 256 

IV — Memorial of the Transylvania Company to Congress in 1795 . . . 257 



AUTHOR'S APPENDIX. 



THE NAME "KENTUCKY." 

Both the country and the river that now bear the beautiful 
name "Kentucky" were called so by the Indians ages before the 
coming of their white destroyers. The Indians also called the 
river "Chenoca," a word which still distinguishes a mountain 
spur in Bell County, Kentucky, but the name they used by far 
the most was Kentucky. In coming into use among the whites 
early in the eighteenth century the word varied as to form and 
pronunciation according to the user's knowledge of the Indian 
tongue. John Sailing, who was a prisoner among the Cherokees 
for some years before 1736, and who must have been somewhat 
familiar with their language, gives the name as we now have it, 
when he says they took him "to the salt licks of Kentucky."' 
Alexander Maginty, who had also been held by the Indians, 
deposed in 1753 that they captured him "on the south bank of 
the Cantucky, """ and Colonel George Croghan (not the Major 
Croghan of Fort Stephenson), who was for so many years British 
Agent among the Si.\ Nations and an authority in savage matters, 
speaks in his journal^ of 1765 of "the River Kentucky." Doctor 
Thomas Walker (1749) ignores the Indian name, if he knew it. 

• Withers' Border Warfare. 
^ Made in Philadelphia. Howe. 

3 Published in The American Journal of Geology and N. S. for Decem- 
ber, 183 1. 



144 Boonesborough 

Christopher Gist (1751) gives it in a corrupted form as " Cutta- 
way, " and Lewis Evans (1755), who only caught the name from 
traders, put it down on his map as "Cuttawa. " Later on, after 
many vicissitudes among the whites as to speUing and pronuncia- 
tion, the name came into permanent use as the Indians themselves 
pronounced it, "Kentucky." 

Authors differ as to the meaning of the name. According to 
Darlington, in Archives Americana, it is a Mohawk word signify- 
ing "among the meadows." Johnson, in "Indian Tribes of 
Ohio," claims it is Shawanese, meaning " at the head of a river," 
and others give it still different definitions. Probably the earliest 
writer to give its meaning as "The Dark and Bloody Ground " was 
Filson ( 1784), who says the country was so denominated by the 
Indians when Findlay traveled through it about 1767. This state- 
ment was adopted by succeeding historians and came into use, 
though Filson gave no authority for it, and there is nothing extant 
that this writer knows of to sustain it — certainly nothing from the 
Indians themselves. There is a popular impression that this 
phrase, "The Dark and Bloody Ground," was used as the mean- 
ing of the word Kentucky by the Cherokees at the treaty of 
Watauga in 1775, but that is a mistake. On that occasion Drag- 
ging Canoe, who was strongly opposed to the treaty, said in that 
metaphorical style which distinguished his race, that there was a 
"dark cloud" over Kentucky,' meaning by that expression, as he 
himself explained, the hostility of the northern tribes to its occu- 
pancy by the whites. On the same occasion an Indian opposer 
of the treaty, hoping to arouse the superstitious fears of the whites, 
said that the land desired by Henderson and Company was a 
"bloody country,"'' but in neither case was a reference made to 

' Deposition of Charles Robertson. See Appendix F. 
'Deposition of James Robertson, Volume I, Virginia State Papers. 



Appendix 145 

the meaning of the word " Kentucky." What this last expression 
did mean is not clear. Certain writers assume that it referred to 
the supposed bloody extermination of the Mound Builders, but 
on that theory the phrase would apply with even more force to 
Ohio and other States of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. One 
has as much authority, apparently, for caUing it "The Meadow 
Land" as "The Dark and Bloody Ground." 



DANIEL BOONE BEFORE 1775. 

Some of the Watauga settlers had known Boone before this 
spring of 1775, for they had come themselves from the Yadkin 
Valley, to which his father had emigrated from Pennsylvania in 
1753, when Daniel was nineteen and already an adventurous 
hunter. As early as 1760 he had crossed the Alleghanies and 
begun to explore the Watauga region, and in 1769 he had 
passed the Cumberland barrier and was hunting up and down 
the Kentucky River. He had long been familiar with the lonely 
country west of the Blue Ridge when the Regulators of North 
Carolina were defeated, and had guided some of those victims of 
royal oppression over the mountains when they fled to the 
obscurity and freedom of the Watauga wilderness. In 1773 he 
had been frustrated in his attempt to plant in Kentucky a 
colony of which his family was a part (see Appendix C), and the 
next year, while waiting for another chance to settle there, had 
been called into service in Dunmore's War, from which he had 
returned but a few months before this spring of 1775 more 
determined than ever to carry out his Kentucky project. 



146 Boonesborough 



BOONE'S FIRST ATTEMPT TO COLONIZE KENTUCKY 
(1773) BARRED AT WALLEN'S GAP. 

(Statement of M. B. Wood.' See Footnote on page 38.) 

About the first of March, 1773, Daniel Boone started from 
North Carolina with his first colony for Kentucky. He crossed 
Clinch River at the old Neil ford, and went up the Devil's Race 
Path and crossed Powell Mountain near the head of Wallen 
Creek. On this trip there were with Boone eighteen men, 
besides women and children. They went down Wallen Creek 
to "the gap," where it breaks through Wallen Ridge. Just as 
the immigrants were entering the gap they were attacked by 
twenty-seven Indians, and at their first fire Boone's oldest son 
was killed, and there they buried him. Boone fired and killed 
an Indian, and before the savages could carry their comrade 
away Boone had reloaded his gun and wounded another. The 
Indians then fell back. Boone had intended to go through the 
gap and camp in the level country beyond, but it was late in 
the evening and he selected his camping-ground in the gap. 
There was a dry hollow which led up into a gorge of the ridge, 
and in the wet season the water running down this hollow had 
washed the dirt from under the roots of a beech tree, forming a 
fair shelter from the winds. Here Boone put the women and 
children, and posted sentinels all around his camp. These dispo- 
sitions being made, with a few of his men he followed the 
Indians some distance in their retreat down the creek, but night 
coming on they returned to their camp. 

About midnight it was discovered that the Indians were 
stealthily approaching the camp, and the riflemen were soon ready 

' The'initial " M " of this name is incorrectly given as " W " on page 38. 



Appendix 147 

for them. They waited till the Indians got in range, when they 
suddenly fired on them. The Indians were not expecting this, 
and hastily fell back. The next morning Boone and his men 
followed their trail down the creek. They saw traces of blood, 
and it was evident that some of the Indians had been killed or 
wounded. The pioneers advanced cautiously until they came to 
the mouth of the creek, where it empties into Powell River. 
On a bluff or spur on the opposite side of the river they saw 
the Indians hovering over a fire. Boone's party shot at them 
with no apparent result, but the savages scampered away. The 
pioneers, believing that the Indians had collected a large force in 
their front to oppose their further advance, fell back to Snoddy's 
Fort. After resting there a few days, the entire party except 
Boone and his family returned to North Carolina. 



PROCLAMATION OF GOVERNOR MARTIN OF NORTH 

CAROLINA (FEBRUARY lo, 1775) AGAINST "RICHARD 

HENDERSON AND HIS CONFEDERATES." 

(From Volume IX, Colonial Records of North Carolina.) 

Whereas his Majesty by his Royal Proclamation bearing Date 
at St. James's the seventh day of October 1763, did among other 
Regulations thereby made, declare his Royal Will and Pleasure 
with respect to his Territory claimed by the Indian Nations in 
North America in the following words: "And Whereas great 
Frauds and Abuses have been committed in the purchasing of 
Lands of the Indians to the great Prejudice of our Interests and 
to the great Dissatisfaction of the said Indians. In order to 
prevent such Irregularities for the future and to the end that the 



148 Boonesborotigh 



Indians may be convinced of our justice and determined Resolu- 
tion to remove all reasonable cause of Discontent, we do with 
the advice of our Privy Council strictly enjoin and require that 
no private person do presume to make any purchase from the 
said Indians of any Lands reserved to the said Indians within 
those parts of our Colonies where we have thought proper to 
allow Settlement ; but that if at any time any of the said Indians 
should be inclined to dispose of the said Lands the same shall 
be purchased only for us in our name at some public Meeting 
Assembly of the said Indians, to be held for that purpose by the 
Governor or Commander in Chief of our Colony respectively 
within which they shall be : And in case they shall be within 
the limits of any Proprietary Government they shall be pur- 
chased only for the Use and in the Name of such Proprietaries 
conformable to such Directions or Instructions as we or they 
shall think proper to give for that Purpose." 

And Whereas in and by an Act of the General Assembly of 
this Province entitled "An Act for restraining the Indians from 
molesting or injuring the Inhabitants of this Government and for 
securing to the Indians the Right and Property of their own 
Lands;" it is, among other things, "Enacted, That no white 
Man shall, for any consideration whatsoever, purchase or buy 
any Tract or Parcel of Land claimed or actually in possession of 
any Indian without Liberty for so doing from the Governor and 
Council first had and obtained under the Penalty of Twenty 
pounds for every hundred Acres of Land so bargained for and 
purchased ; one half to the Informer, and the other Half to him 
or them that shall sue for the same." 

And Whereas I have information that a certain Richard Hen- 
derson, late of the County of Granville in this Province, con- 
federating with divers other Persons, hath, in open violation of 
his Majesty's said Royal Proclamation and of the said act of the 



Appendix 149 

General Assembly of this Province, entered into Treaty with 
certain Indians of the Cherokee Nation for the Purchase and 
Cession of a very large Tract of Country, by some reported to 
be Two Hundred Miles Square, by others Three Hundred Miles 
Square, and said to be part of the hunting Grounds of the 
Cherokee Nation, and actually comprized within the limits of 
the Colony of Virginia and the Royal Grant to the Right 
Honorable the Earl Granville. 

And whereas, this daring, unjust and unwarrantable Proceed- 
ing is of a most alarming and dangerous Tendency to the Peace 
and Welfare of this and the neighboring Colony inasmuch as it 
is represented to me that the said Richard Henderson and his 
Confederates have conditioned to pay the Indians for the Ces- 
sion of Land before mentioned a considerable quantity of Gun- 
powder, whereby they will be furnished with the means of 
annoying his Majesty's subjects in this and the neighboring 
Colonies ; and that he hath also invited many Debtors, and other 
persons in desperate circumstances, to desert this Province and 
become Settlers on the said Lands, to the great injury of Creditors. 

And whereas, it is to be apprehended that if the said Richard 
Henderson is suffered to proceed in this his unwarrantable and 
lawless undertaking, a settlement may be formed that will 
become an Asylum to the most abandoned Fugitives from the 
several Colonies, to the great Molestation and Injury of his 
Majesty's subjects in this Province in particular and to the 
manifest Detriment of the Interest of Earl Granville, within 
whose proprietary District the Lands treated for as aforesaid by 
the said Richard Henderson with the Cherokee Indians are 
deemed and reported to be in part comprehended : I have 
thought proper to issue this Proclamation hereby in his Majesty's 
Name and also in Behalf of the Earl Granville, as his Agent 
and Attorney strictly to forbid the said Richard Henderson and 



'SO Booiiesborough 

his Confederates, on pain of his Majesty's highest displeasure, 
and of suffering the most rigorous Penalties of the Law, to 
prosecute so unlawful an Undertaking, as also to enjoin all his 
Majesty's liege subjects to use all lawful means in their Power 
to obstruct, hinder and prevent the Execution of his Design of 
settlement, so contrary to Law and Justice and so pregnant with 
ill consequences. And I do hereby forewarn all, and all manner of 
persons against taking any part or having any concern or deal- 
ings with the said Richard Henderson, touching the Lands for 
which he is said to have entered into Treaty with the Indians 
as aforesaid or with any other Person or Persons who have 
engaged or may engage in Projects of the like Nature, contrary 
to the Tenor of his Majesty's Royal Proclamation aforesaid, as 
every Treaty, Bargain and Agreement with the Indians repug- 
nant thereto is illegal, null and void, to all Intents and Purposes, 
and that all partakers therein will expose themselves to the 
severest Penalties. And as it is necessary for the more effectual 
Prevention of such illicit and fraudulent dealings with the Indians, 
to advertise them of the Rules and Regulations established by his 
Majesty's Proclamation ; it is hereby required of his Majesty's 
subjects having intercourse with the Indians and particularly of 
the Officers appointed to superintend Indian Affairs, that they 
do fully explain to them the beneficial Nature and Design of the 
said Royal Proclamation to themselves and that they do make 
the Indians sensible of the High Offence they commit against his 
Majesty in doing any thing contrary to the directions thereof. 

Given under my Hand, and the Great Seal of the said Prov- 
ince, at Newbern, the loth day of February, Anno Dom 1775, 
and in the isth year of his Majesty's Reign. 

God save the King. Jo. Martin. 

By His Excellency's command. 
James Parratt, D. Sec. 



App e n dix 



1=51 



TREATY OF WATAUGA. 

Copy of the Deed from the Cherokees to Henderson & Co. 

March 17, 1775. 

(Furnished by James Alves for Butler's History of Kentucky, 2d Edition.) 

This indenture made this seventeenth day of March in the 
year of our Lord Christ one thousand seven hundred and seventy- 
five between Oconistoto chief warrior and first representative 
of the Cherokee Nation or tribe of Indians and Attacullacullah 
and Savanooico otherwise Coronoh for themselves and in behalf 
of the whole nation. Being the aborigines and sole owners by 
occupancy from the beginning of time of the lands on the waters 
of Ohio River from the mouth of the Tennessee River up the 
said Ohio to the mouth or emptying of the Great Canaway or 
New River and so across by a Southward line to the Virginia 
line by a direction that shall strike or hit the Holston River six 
English miles above or Eastward of the Long Island therein and 
other lands and territories thereunto adjoining, of the one part 
and Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel Hart, John 
Williams, John Luttrell, William Johnston, James Hogg, David 
Hart and Leonard Hendley Bullock of the province of North 
Carolina of the other part ; witnesseth that the said Oconistoto 
for himself and the rest of the said nation of Indians, for 
and in consideration of the sum of two thousand pounds of lawful 
money of Great Britain, to them in hand paid by the said 
Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel Hart, John Williams, 
John Luttrell, William Johnston, James Hogg, David Hart and 
Leonard Hendley Bullock, the receipt whereof the said Oconistoto 



152 Boonesborough 

and his said whole nation,- do and for themselves and their 
whole tribe of people have granted, bargained and sold, aliened, 
enfeoffed released and confirmed, by these presents do grant, 
bargain, sell, alien, enfeoff, release and confirm unto them the 
said Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel Hart, John 
Williams, John Luttrell, William Johnston, David Hart, James 
Hogg, and Leonard Hendley Bullock their heirs and assigns 
forever all that tract, territory or parcel of land, situate lying and 
being in North America on the Ohio River, one of the eastern 
branches of the Mississippi beginning on the said Ohio River at 
the mouth of Kentucky, Chenoca, or what by the English is called 
Louisa River, from thence running up the said River and the most 
northwardly branch of the same to the head spring thereof, 
thence a southeast course to the top ridge of Powel's Mountain, 
thence westwardly along the ridge of said mountain unto a point 
from which a northwest course will hit or strike the head spring 
of the most southwardly branch of Cumberland River thence 
down the said River including all its waters to the Ohio River, 
thence up the said River as it meanders to the beginning, &c. 
And also the reversion and reversions, remainder and 
remainders, rents and services thereof, and all the estate, right, 
title, interest, claim and demand whatsoever of them the said 
Oconistoto and the aforesaid whole band or tribe of people 
of, in and to the same premises and of, in and to, every part 
thereof. To have and to hold the said messuage and territory, 
and all and singular the premises above mentioned, with the 
appurtenances unto the said Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, 
Nathaniel Hart, John Williams, John Luttrell, William Johnston, 
James Hogg, David Hart, and Leonard Hendley Bullock their 
heirs and assigns, in several and tenants in common, and /lot 
as joint tenants ; that is to say, one eighth part to Richard 



Appendix 153 

Henderson his heirs and assigns forever ; one eight part to 
Thomas Hart his heirs and assigns forever ; one eighth part 
to Nathaniel Hart his heirs and assigns forever ; one eighth part 
to John WilHams his heirs and assigns forever ; one eighth part 
to John Luttrell his heirs and assigns forever ; one eighth 
part to WilHam Johnston his heirs and assigns forever ; one eighth 
part to James Hogg his heirs and assigns forever; one sixteenth 
part to David Hart his heirs and assigns forever ; and one six- 
teenth part to Leonard Hendley Bullock his heirs and assigns 
forever; to the only proper use and behoof of them the said 
Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel Hart, John WiUiams, 
John Luttrell, William Johnston, James Hogg, David Hart, and 
Leonard Hendley Bullock their heirs and assigns that, under the 
yearly rent of four pence or to be holden of the chief, lord or lords 
of the fee of the premises by the rent and services therefore due 
and of right accustomed ; and the said Oconistoto and the said 
nation for themselves do covenant and grant to and with the said 
Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel Hart, John Will- 
iams, John Luttrell, William Johnston, James Hogg, David 
Hart and Leonard Hendley Bullock their heirs and assigns that 
they the said Oconistoto and the rest of the said nation of 
people now are lawfully and rightfully siezed in their own right 
of a good, sure, perfect, absolute and indefeasible estate of 
inheritance in fee simple of and in all and singular the said 
messuage, territory and premises above mentioned and of all and 
every part and parcel thereof with the appurtenances, without 
any manner or condition mortgage, limitation, of use or uses, or 
other matter, cause or thing to alter, change, charge or determine 
the same and also that the said Oconistoto and the aforesaid 
nation now have good right, full power, and lawful authority in 
their own right to grant bargain or sell and convey the said 



154 Boonesborough 

messuage territory and 'premises above-mentioned with the 
appurtenances to the said Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, 
Nathaniel Hart, John WiUiams, John Luttrell, WilHam Johnston, 
James Hogg, David Hart and Leonard Hendley Bullock their 
heirs and assigns to the only proper use and behoof of the said 
Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel Hart, John Will- 
iams, John Luttrell, William Johnston, James Hogg, David 
Hart and Leonard Hendley Bullock their heirs and assigns 
according to the true intent and meaning of these presents and 
also that they the said Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, 
Nathaniel Hart, John Williams, John Luttrell, William Johnston, 
James Hogg, David Hart and Leonard Hendley Bullock their 
heirs and assigns shall and may from time to time and at all 
times hereafter peaceably and quietly have, hold, occupy possess 
and enjoy all and singular the said premises above mentioned to 
be hereby granted with the appurtenances without the let, trouble 
hindrance, molestation, interruption and denial of them the said 
Oconistoto and the rest or any of the said nation their heirs or 
assigns and of all and every other person and persons whatsoever, 
claiming or to claim by, from or under them or any of them and 
further that they the said Oconistoto, Attacullacullah, and Sava- 
nooko, otherwise Coronoh for themselves and in behalf of their 
whole nation and their heirs and all and every other person and 
persons and his and their heirs anything having and claiming 
in the said messuage territory and premises above mentioned or 
any part thereof by, from or under them shall and will at all 
times hereafter at the request and costs of the said Richard 
Henderson, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel Hart, John Williams, John 
Luttrell, Willian Johnston, James Hogg, David Hart, and Leon- 
ard Hendley Bullock their heirs and assigns, make, do and 
execute or cause or procure to be made, done and executed all 



Appendix x55 

and every further and other lawful and reasonable grants, acts 
and assurances in the law whatsoever for the further, better and 
more perfect granting, conveying and assuring of the said premises 
hereby granted with the appurtenances unto the said Richard 
Henderson, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel Hart, John Williams, John 
Luttrell, William Johnston, James Hogg, David Hart, and 
Leonard Hendley Bullock their heirs and assigns to the only 
proper use and behoof of the said Richard Henderson, Thomas 
Hart, Nathaniel Hart, John Williams, John Luttrell, William 
Johnston, James Hogg, David Hart and Leonard Hendley 
Bullock their heirs and assigns according to the true intent and 
meaning of these presents and to and for none other use, intent 
or purpose whatsoever, and lastly the said Oconistoto, Attaculla- 
cullah and Savanooko otherwise Coronoh for themselves and in 
behalf of their whole nation have made, ordained, constituted 
and appointed and by these presents do make, ordain, constitute 
and appoint Joseph Martin and John Farrow their true and 
lawful attornies jointly and either of them severally, for them 
and in their names into the said messuage, territory and premises 
with the appurtenances hereby granted and conveyed or men- 
tioned to be granted and conveyed or into some part thereof in 
the name of the whole, to enter and full and peaceable posses- 
sion and seizure thereof for them and in their names to take 
and to have and after such possession and seizure so thereof 
taken and had the like full and peaceable possession and seizure 
thereof or of some part thereof in the name of the whole, unto 
the said Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel Hart, 
John Williams, John Luttrell, William Johnston, James Hogg, 
David Hart and Leonard Hendley Bullock as their certain 
attorney or attornies in their behalf to give and deliver, to hold 
to them the said Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel 



156 Boonesborough 

Hart, John Williams, John Luttrell, William Johnston, James 
Hogg, David Hart and Leonard Hendley Bullock their heirs and 
assigns forever according to the purpose and intent and meaning 
of these presents, ratifying, confirming, and allowing all and 
whatsoever their attornies or either of them shall do in the 
premises. In witness whereof the said Oconistoto, Attaculla- 
cullah and Savanooko otherwise Coronoh, the three chiefs 
appointed by the warriors and other head men to sign for and 
in behalf of the whole nation hath hereunto set their hands and 
seals this the day and year first above written. 

Oconistoto, 

X his mark. 

Attacullacullah, 

X his mark. 

Savanooko, otherwise Coronoh, 
X his mark. 

Signed, sealed and delivered in presence of 

William Bailey Smith, George Lumkin, 

Thomas Houghton, Castleton Brooks, 

J. P. Bacon, Tilman Dixon, 

Valentine Turey, Thomas Price, Lhiguist. 



Appendix '57 



DEPOSITION OF CHARLES ROBERTSON, 
OCTOBER 3, 1777. 

From Evidence Before the Commissioners Appointed by the 

Virginia Assembly, July 3, 1776, to Investigate 

Land Claim of Henderson and Company. 

(Cal. Va. State Papers, Volume I, page 292.) 

He the said Chas. Robertson, deposeth, and saith, That he 
was at the Treaty held at Watauga, between the said Richd. 
Henderson and Company and the Cherokee Indians, in March 
1775, and beheves he heard every PubHc Talk, that was delivered 
by the parties — That as to the Treaty Conferences being held 
fairly and openly the Deponent frequently took notice that both 
Col. Henderson and the Indians would always cause to be present 
the white men and Indian Half Breeds who understood both Lan- 
guages as a check upon the Chief Interpreter, lest he should mis- 
translate, or leave out, through Forgetfulness any Part of what 
either Party should speak and saith that he believes the Treaty 
was held fairly and openly, but does not remember the whole 
of the Boundary altho' he believes the Indians understood all that 
was said by the said Henderson — That he does not remember the 
Bounds of the Lands proposed to be bought, only that it joined 
the Ohio, and in them was mentioned something about the Head 
Springs of Kentuckie, and he believes of Cumberland, and that 
tis his opinion it was to keep the dividing Ridge between Cum- 
berland and Tenase. That there was eight or nine different pieces 
of writing signed by the Indians, who were told that the reason 
of their being so many, was that there was so many different 



15^ Boonesborough 

Partners in the Company, dnd that each must have one for fear 
one should be destroyed, and that every one might know where 
his Land was — That none but one of them was read to the Indians. 
Col. Henderson told the Indians, these writings were all ahke word 
for word ( and no one hindered from reading them but does not 
know that any person did read them ) and that they might have 
them all read if they chose it : to which they said they did not 
want them read. 

He does not know how many Indians signed these Papers, but 
he understood it was done by consent of the whole, as he did not 
hear any Particular one make an objection. 

The deponent frequently tried to count the number of Indians 
which he could not do exactly but from his best observations, 
there was about one thousand in all counting big and little, and 
about half of them were men — He did not understand there was 
any more than one principal man behind called Judges Friend, 
who he understood had sent word that what the other Chiefs 
agreed to he would abide by — On the second day of the Treaty, 
the Dragging Canoe went out displeased on hearing the Proposals 
of the said Henderson as to what Lands he wanted to purchase, 
because ( as the said Indian said ) the white people wanted too 
much of their Hunting Grounds. 

On the first Day of the Treaty the Indians offered to give up 
some Lands which they said Col. Donelson had agreed to give 
them five hundred Pounds for, and had not paid them, but Col. 
Henderson said it would not be worth his while to talk about 
buying that only, as he had a house full of Goods for them, and 
should be at yet greater Expence for Beares and Rum to enter- 
tain them upon. 

That towards the close of the Treaty, when the Indians seemed 
like Complying with Col. Henderson's Proposals, the said Hen- 



Appendix 159 

derson told the Indians there was Land between them and his 
Country — He did not love to walk upon their land. That he had 
more Goods, Guns and Ammunition which they had not yet seen. 
— After this something was said concerning Carter's Books being 
destroyed. 

The Dragging Canoe in some part of the Treaty said there 
was bad People both of his Nation and the Whites — that there 
was a dark cloud over that Country — He could vouch that his 
own Countrymen would not hurt him, but was afraid the Northern 
Indians would — that it was good to have the path clear and 
clean, but on hearing what Col. Henderson said about the Land 
between them and his, the said Hendersons Country he (the 
Dragging Canoe ) said stamping his foot on the ground, we give 
you from this place, pointing towards the Kentuckie — at which 
the deponent was displeased, because he was acting as a trustee 
to purchase the Lands on Watauga, (in conjunction with the said 
Henderson as to the Expense of the Treaty ) of the said Indians 
as he thought the said Company were then getting the Watauga 
Lands, which he then had a promise of from the Indians, and had 
the Goods ready to pay for it. 

The Deponent saith he in no ways interfered in the said Hen- 
dersons Purchase — His Business at the Treaty was a Trustee 
from the Watauga People to buy the Country of them Indians. 

When the Dragging Canoe stampt his foot on the Ground, 
and said he gave up all the Land from that Place, the Deponent 
understood that not only the Lands at Watauga which he was 
about purchasing, but the Lands in Carters Valley which borders 
on Clinch Mountain, quite to the Ohio, was then given up, and 
that if he ever obtained them, it must be of the said Henderson, 
which was the cause of his being displeased — He knew nothing 
of any Deed being signed for these last mentioned Lands, the' 



i6o Boonesborough 

he has understood since, that the said Henderson did take a Deed 
for the Land from Watauga quite to Ohio — The Deponent heard 
no discourse about a boundary for the Lands Northward of Hol- 
ston, and on this side Cumberland Mountain, except only what 
the Dragging Canoe said, when he stampt on the Ground, as he 
was then speaking of the Nation — The Deponent never heard 
Col. Henderson promise them any more goods — The Indians 
appeared to be satisfied with what he had given them, and that 
previously he told them, if they did not choose to take them they 
would still be friends. 

The Deponent saith he saw these last mentioned Goods as 
well as all the others delivered and divided and saw Papers 
destroyed, said to be Carters Book of accounts against the Indians 
which he was informed by Col. Carter amounted to more than 
600 — The Deponent never heard there was any other bounds 
read to the Indians, than what was in the Deed — The Deponent 
heard there had been some claim to his Country, by the North- 
ward Indians, but that these Indians said it was their Land and 
what they would so sell it. 

And further saith not. 

Sworn to before us &C. 

Arthur Campbell. 

Dan Smith. 



Appendix i6i 



FELIX WALKER'S NARRATIVE OF HIS TRIP WITH 

BOONE FROM LONG ISLAND TO BOONES- 

BOROUGH IN MARCH, 1775. 

(Written about 1824. Published in DeBow's Review of February, 1854.) 

In the month of February in that year (1775), Captain Will- 
iam Twetty, Samuel Coburn, James Bridges, Thomas Johnson, 
John Hart, William Hicks, James Peeke, and myself, set out from 
Rutherford County, North Carolina, to explore a country by the 
name of Leowvisay, greatly renowned and highly spoken of as the 
best quality of land, abounding in game, now the State of Kentucky. 

We placed ourselves under the care and direction of Captain 
Twetty, an active and enterprising woodsman, of good original 
mind and great benevolence, and although a light habited man, 
in strength and agility of bodily powers was not surpassed by any 
of his day and time, well calculated for the enterprise. 

We proceeded to Watawgo river, a tributary stream of Hol- 
steen, to the residence of Colonel Charles Robertson, now in the 
State of Tennessee, where a treaty was held by Colonel Richard 
Henderson and his associates, with the Cherokee tribe of Indians, 
for the purchase of that section of country we were going to visit, 
then called the Bloody Ground, so named from the continual 
wars and quarrels of the hunting parties of Indians of different 
tribes who all claimed the ground as their own, and the privilege 
of hunting the game ; who murdered and plundered each other, 
as opportunity offered. 

We continued at Watawgo during the treaty, which lasted 
about twenty days. Among others, there was a distinguished 
chief called Atticulaculla, the Indian name, known to the white 



i62 Boonesborough 

people by the name of the Little Carpenter — in allusion, say the 
Indians, to his deep, artful, and ingenious diplomatic abilities, 
ably demonstrated in negotiating treaties with the white people, 
and influence in their national councils ; like as a white carpenter 
could make every notch and joint fit in wood, so he could bring 
all his views to fill and fit their places in the political machinery 
of his nation. He was the most celebrated and influential Indian 
among all the tribes then known ; considered as the Solon of his 
day. He was said to be about ninety years of age, a very small 
man, and so lean and light habited, that I scarcely believe he 
would have exceeded more in weight than a pound for each year 
of his life. He was marked with two large scores or scars on each 
cheek, his ears cut and banded with silver, hanging nearly down 
on each shoulder, the ancient Indian mode of distinction in some 
tribes and fashion in others. In one of his public talks delivered 
to the whites, he spoke to this effect : he was an old man, had 
presided as chief in their council, and as president of his nation 
for more than half a century, had formerly been appointed agent 
and envoy extraordinary to the king of England on business of the 
first importance to his nation ; he crossed the big river, arrived 
at his destination, was received with great distinction, had the 
honor of dining with his majesty and the nobility ; had the utmost 
respect paid him by the great men among the white people ; had 
accomplished his mission with success ; and from the long stand- 
ing in the highest dignities of his nation, he claimed the confi- 
dence and good faith in all and everything he would advance in 
support of the rightful claims of his people to the Bloody Ground, 
then in treaty to be sold to the white people. His name is men- 
tioned in the life of General Marion, at a treaty held with the 
Cherokees at Kewee, in South Carolina, in the year 1762 or '63. 
The treaty being concluded and the purchase made, we proceeded 



Appendix 163 

on our journey to meet Col. Daniel Boon, with other adventurers, 
bound to the same country ; accordingly we met and rendezvoused 
at the Long Island on Holsteen river, united our small force with 
Colonel Boon and his associates, his brother, Squire Boon, and 
Col. Richard Callaway, of Virginia. Our company, when united, 
amounted to 30 persons. We then, by general consent, put our- 
selves under the management and control of Col. Boon, who was 
to be our pilot and conductor through the wilderness, to the 
promised land ; perhaps no adventurers since the days of Don 
Quixote, or before, ever felt so cheerful and elated in prospect ; 
every heart abounded with joy and excitement in anticipating the 
new things we would see, and the romantic scenes through which 
we must pass ; and, exclusive of the novelty of the journey, the 
advantages and accumulations ensuing on the settlement of a new 
country was a dazzling object with many of our company. Under 
the influence of these impressions we went our way rejoicing with 
transporting views of our success, taking our leave of the civilized 
world for a season. 

About the loth of March we put off from the Long Island, 
marked out our track with our hatchets, crossed Clinch and 
Powell's river, over Cumberland mountain, and crossed Cum- 
berland river — came to a watercourse called by Col. 

Rockcastle river ; killed a fine bear on our way, camped all night 
and had an excellent supper. 

On leaving that river, we had to encounter and cut our way 
through a country of about twenty miles, entirely covered with 
dead brush, which we found a difficult and laborious task. At 
the end of which we arrived at the commencement of a cane 
country, traveled about thirty miles through thick cane and reed, 
and as the cane ceased, we began to discover the pleasing and 
rapturous appearance of the plains of Kentucky. A new sky and 



i64 BoonesborotLgh 

strange earth seemed to be' presented to our view. So rich a soil 
we had never seen before ; covered with clover in full bloom, 
the woods were abounding with wild game — turkeys so numerous 
that it might be said they appeared but one flock, universally 
scattered in the woods. It appeared that nature, in the profu- 
sion of her bounty, had spread a feast for all that lives, both 
for the animal and rational world. A sight so delightful to our 
view and grateful to our feelings, almost inclined us, in imitation 
of Columbus, in transport to kiss the soil of Kentucky, as he 
hailed and saluted the sand on his first setting his foot on the 
shores of America. The appearance of the country coming up 
to the full measure of our expectations, and seemed to exceed the 
fruitful source of our imaginary prospects. 

We felt ourselves as passengers through a wilderness just 
arrived at the fields of Elysium, or at the garden where was no 
forbidden fruit. Nothing can furnish the contemplative mind 
with more sublime reflections, than nature unbroken by art ; we 
can there trace the wisdom of the Great Architect in the con- 
struction of his work in nature's simplicity, which, when he had 
finished, he pronounced all good. But, alas ! the vision of a 
moment made dream of a dream, and the shadow of a shade ! 
Man may appoint, but One greater than men can disappoint. 
A sad reverse overtook us two days after, on our way to Ken- 
tucky river. On the 25th of March, 1775, we were fired on by 
the Indians, in our camp asleep, about an hour before day. 
Capt. Twetty was shot in both knees, and died the third day 
after. A black man, his body servant, killed dead ; myself badly 
wounded ; our company dispersed. So fatal and tragical an event 
cast a deep gloom of melancholy over all our prospects, and high 
calculations of long life and happy days in our newly-discovered 
country were prostrated ; hope vanished from the most of us, and 



Appendix 16= 



left us suspended in the tumult of uncertainty and conjecture. 
Col. Boon, and a few others, appeared to possess firmness and 
fortitude. In our calamitous situation, a circumstance occurred 
one morning after our misfortunes, that proved the courage and 
stability of our few remaining men (for some had gone back). 
One of our men, who had run off at the fire of the Indians on our 
camp, was discovered peeping from behind a tree, by a black 
woman belonging to Colonel Callaway, while gathering some 
wood. She ran in and gave the alarm of Indians. Colonel Boon 
instantly caught his rifle, ordered the men to form, take trees, 
and give battle, and not to run till they saw him fall. They 
formed agreeably to his directions, and I believe they would have 
fought with equal bravery to any Spartan band ever brought to 
the field of action, when the man behind the tree announced his 
name and came in. My situation was critical and dangerous, 
being then a youth, three hundred miles from white inhabitants. 
My friend and guardian. Captain Twetty, taken dead from my 
side, my wounds pronounced by some to be mortal, produced very 
serious reflections. Yet withal I retained firmness to support me 
under the presure of distress, and did not suffer me to languish in 
depression of mind. 

But where shall I begin, or where can I end, in thanks and 
grateful acknowledgment to that benign and merciful Protector 
who spared and preserved me in the blaze of danger and in the 
midst of death ! I trust I shall remember that singular and pro- 
tecting event, with filial sensations of gratitude, while I retain my 
recollections. We remained in the same place twelve days ; I 
could not be removed sooner without the danger of instant death. 
At length I was carried in a litter between two horses, twelve 
miles, to Kentucky river, where we made a station, and called it 
Boonsborough, situated in a plain on the south side of the river, 



I 



i66 Boonesborough 

wherein was a lick with two sulphur springs strongly impregnated. 
On entering the plain we were permitted to view a very inter- 
esting and romantic sight. A number of buffaloes, of all sizes, 
supposed to be between two and three hundred, made off from 
the lick in every direction ; some running, some walking, others 
loping slowly and carelessly, with young calves playing, skipping 
and bounding through the plain. Such a sight some of us never 
saw before, nor perhaps may never again. But to proceed, 
Colonel Richard Henderson, Colonel Luttrell, from North Car- 
olina ; Captain William Cock, since the Honorable Judge Cock, 
of Tennessee, and Colonel Thomas Slaughter, of Virginia, arrived 
in the month of April with a company of about thirty men. Our 
military forces, when united, numbered about sixty or sixty- 
five men, expert riflemen. We lived plentifully on wild meat, 
buffalo, bear, deer, and turkey, without bread or salt, generally 
in good health, until the month of July, when I left the country. 

Colonel Richard Henderson, being the chief proprietor in the 
purchase of the bloody ground (indeed so to us), acted as Gov- 
ernor, called an assembly, by election of members, out of our 
small numbers ; organized a government, convened the assembly 
in May 1775, consisting of eighteen members, exclusive of the 
speaker, passed several laws for the regulation of our little com- 
munity, well adapted to the policy of an infant government. 

This assembly was held under two shade trees, in the plains 
of Boonsborough. This was the first feature of civilization ever 
attempted in what is now called the Western Country. 

This small beginning, that little germ of policy, by a few 
adventurers from North Carolina, has given birth to the now 
flourishing State of Kentucky. From that period the population 
increased with such rapidity, that in less than twenty years it 
became a State. 



Appendix 167 

In justice to Colonel Henderson, it may be said, that his 
message or address to the assembly alluded to was considered 
equal to any of like kind ever delivered to any deliberate body in 
that day and time. 

In the sequel and conclusion of my narrative I must not neglect 
to give honor to whom honor is due. Colonel Boone conducted 
the company under his care through the wilderness, with great 
propriety, intrepidity and courage ; and was I to enter an excep- 
tion to any part of his conduct, it would be on the ground that he 
appeared void of fear and of consequence — too little caution for 
the enterprise. But let me, with feeling recollection and lasting 
gratitude, ever remember the unremitting kindness, sympathy, and 
attention paid to me by Col. Boone in my distress. He was my 
father, my physician, and friend ; he attended me as his child, 
cured my wounds by the use of medicines from the woods, nursed 
me with paternal affection until I recovered, without the expec- 
tation of reward. Gratitude is the only tribute I can pay to his 
memory. He is now beyond the praise or the blame of mortals, 
in that world unknown from whose bourne no traveler returns. 
I also was kindly treated by all my companions, particularly John 
Kennedy. From Captain Cock I received kind and friendly 
attentions. 

We continued in our station ; our men were out viewing and 
exploring the country choosing such tracts of land as suited them, 
plenty for all, and thought all was our own. 

Colonel James Herod, my old acquaintance in North Carolina, 
come up to see me tarried a few days. Being a little recovered, 
I went home with him to his station, since called Herodsbough, 
where he had a few men. I tarried there two weeks, and returned 
to Boonsborough. These two stations contained the whole popu- 
lation of that country, which did not exceed in number one hun- 
dred men. 



i68 Booiiesborotcgh 

The company in our station continued to traverse the country 
through woods and wilds, choosing their lots of future inheritance, 
until the month of July, when I returned home to my father's 
residence in North Carolina, and have not seen Kentucky since, 
which I have often regretted. 

I have been often solicited to make a publication of this 
adventure, but still declined. Until late, there appears some- 
thing like it in the newspapers, which is not correct. 

I, therefore thought it incumbent on me, as one of the com- 
pany, and in possession of all the facts, to make this statement, 
and give it publicity, which I know to be truth by hard experience ; 
and perhaps I may be the last solitary individual of that number 
left to give a correct relation of that adventure. 



H 

BOONE'S LETTER OF APRIL i. 1775. 

Addressed to "Colonel Richard Henderson — These 
With Care." 

(From the Original, copied by Judge James Hall in 1835.) 

April the First, 1775. 
Dear Colonel : 

After my compliments to you I shall acquaint you of our mis- 
fortune. On March the 25 a party of Indians fired on my Company 
about half an hour before day and killed Mr. Twetty and his negro 
and wounded Mr. Walker very deeply, but I hope he will recover. 
On March the 28 as we were hunting for provisions we found Samuel 
Tate's son, who gave us an account that the Indians fired on their 
camp on the 27 day. My brother and I went down and found two 
men killed and sculped, Thomas McDowell and Jeremiah McPeters. 



Appendix 169 

I have sent a man down to all the lower companies in order to 
gather them all to the mouth of Otter Creek. My advise to you, 
sir, is to come or send as soon as possible. Your company is 
desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy, but are willing to 
stay and venture their lives with you, and now is the time to fluster- 
ate their intentions and keep the country, whilst we are in it. If 
we give way to them now, it will ever be the case. This day we 
start from the battle ground, for the mouth of Otter Creek, where 
we shall immediately erect a fort, which will be done before you 
can come or send — then we can send ten men to meet you, if you 
send for them. \ am sir your most obedient 

Daniel Boone.' 
N. B. — We stood on the ground and guarded our baggage till 
day, and lost nothing. We have about fifteen miles to Cantuck 
at Otter Creek. 



JUDGE RICHARD HENDERSON'S JOURNAL OF A TRIP 

TO "CANTUCKEY" AND OF EVENTS AT 

BOONESBOROUGH IN 1775. 

(From the Original in the Library of the Wis. S. Historical Society.") 

Monday March 20th 1775 Having finished my treaty with the 
Indians at Wataugah set out for Louisa. 

Tuesday 21st. Went to Mr. John Seviers. 

' Boone's signature, opposite page 89, is a facsimile from the original 
of this letter. 

"The original of the journal here given in part, comprising eighty 
pages of a memorandum book used by Judge Henderson, was loaned by 
Pleasant Henderson to Mann Butler when that writer was preparing his 
History of Kentucky. Mr. Butler seems to have deposited the little book 

23 



170 Boonesborough 

Thursday 23d Still at Mr. Seviers because our horses were lost 
though not uneasy as Messrs. Hart and Luttrell made a poor hand 
of traveling. 

Friday 24th. Set off in pursuit of Hart and Luttrell, overtook 
them both, and lodged at Capt. Bledsoes. 

Saturday aSth Came to Mrs. Callaways. 

Monday 27th Employed in storing away goods. 

Wednesday 29th Continued our journey. 

Thursday 30th Arrived at Capt Martins in Powells Valley. 

Friday 31st — Employed in making house to secure the wagons 
as we could not possibly clear the road any further My wagon 
& Saml. Henderson came up, — also Mr. Luttrell in the evening. 

Saturday April ist. — Employed in making ready for packing. 
Mr Hart came up. 

Tuesday 4th — Waiting for the wagon — the same evening the 
wagon arrived though so late we could not proceed. 

Wednesday 5th Started off with our pack horses ab't 3-0'Clock. 
Traveled about 5 miles to a large spring — the same evening Mr 
Luttrell went out hunting and has not yet returned. Nathl 
Henderson & Jas Durring went in pursuit of him — The same 
evening Saml Hendersons & John Farrars horses took a scare 
with their packs and ran away with same. 

Next morning Saml. Henderson & Farrar went in pursuit of 
their horses. 

Thursday 6th Traveled about six miles to the last settlement 
in Powells Valley, where we were obliged to stop and kill a beef 

with the Kentucky Historical Society about the year 1839, after which it 
came into the hands of the late Lyman C. Draper of the Wis. His. Society. 
It is one of the very few souvenirs extant of the Transylvania Company and 
of the founding of Boonesborough. The copy we present was made directly 
from the original, and, while not entire, is the most complete ever published 
in historical form, including, as it does, every thing of real value and 
relevancy in the original that pertains to our subject. 



Appendix n^ 

wait for Saml Henderson &c. Saml Henderson & John Farrar 
returned to us with their horses packs and everything safe — we 
having waited at our camp lo miles below Martins for them. 

Friday 7th About break of day begun to snow. About 11 
o'clock received a letter from Mr Luttrells camp that five persons 
were killed on the road to the Cantuckee, by Indians. Capt Hart, 
upon the receipt of this news retreated back with his company 
and determin'd to settle in the Valley to make corn for the 
Cantuckey people. 

The same day received a letter from Daniel Boone that his 
company was fired upon by Indians who killed two of his men 
though he kept the ground and saved the baggage &c. 

Saturday 8th. Started about 10 o'clock. Crossed Cumberland 
Gap. about 4 miles away met about 40 persons returning from 
the Cantuckey on account of the late murders by the Indians. 
Could prevail on one only to return. Several Virginians who 
were with us returned home. 

Sunday 9th Arrived at Cumberland River where we met Robt 
Wills & his son returning. 

Monday lOth Dispatched Capt Cocke to the Cantuckey to 
inform Capt Boone that we were on the road. Continued at 
camp that day on account of the badness of the weather. 

Tuesday nth Started from Cumberl'd. made a very good 
days travel of near 20 miles, kill'd beef &c. 

Wednesday 12th Traveled about 5 miles — prevented going 
any further by the rains and high water at Richland Creek. 

Thursday 13th Last night arrived near our camp Stewart and 
ten other men who camped within half mile of us on their return 
from Lousia. Camped that night at Sorrel River— they had well 
nigh turned three or four of our Virginians back. 

Saturday 15th Travel'd about 18 miles and camped on the 



172 Boonesborough 

North side of Rock Castle River — this river a fork of Cumber- 
land. Lost an ax this morning at camp. 

Sunday i6th About 12 oclock met James McAfee with 18 other 
persons returning from Cantuckey. Travel'd about 22 miles and 
camped on the head of Dicks River where Luna from McAfees 
camp came to us resolved to go to the Louisa. 

Monday 17th. Started. About 3 o'clock prevented by rain. 
Travel'd 7 Miles. Tuesday i8th Travel'd about 16 miles. Met 
Michael Stoner with pack horses to assist us. Camp't that night 
in the eye of the rich land. Stoner brought us excellent beef in 
plenty. 

Wednesday 19th Travel'd about 16 miles and camped on Otter 
Creek — a good mill place. 

Thursday 20th Arrived at Fort Boone on the mouth of Otter 
Creek, Cantukey River where we were saluted by a running fire of 
about 25 Guns, all that was then at Fort — The men appeared in 
high spirits and much rejoiced on our arrival. 

Friday 21st On Viewing the Fort, and finding the plan not suf- 
ficient to admit of building for the reception of our company and 
a scarcity of ground suitable for clearing at such an advanced sea- 
son, was at some loss how to proceed, Mr Boone's company having 
laid off most of the adjacent good lands into lots of two acres 
each and taking as it fell to each individual by lot was in actual 
possession and occupying them. After some perplexity resolved 
to erect a fort on the opposite side of a large lick near the river 
bank which would place us at the distance of about 300 yards 
from the other fort the only commodious place near or where 
we could be of any service to Boone's men or vice versa. On 
communicating my thoughts to Mr Luttrell on this subject with 
my reasons for preferring this place to a large spring over a hill 
about three quarters of a mile from Fort Boone, he readily gave 



Appendix 173 

his assent and seemed pleased with the choice. Mr. Hart said 
in a very cold indifferent manner "he thought it might do well 
enough." Accordingly 'twas resolved, that a fort should be built 
at said place and we moved our tents to the ground — i. e. Mr 
Luttrell and myself and our particular company lodged there 
Saturday night 22d. 

Sunday 23d Passed the day without public worship as no place 
provided for that purpose. Monday proceeded with the assistance 
of Capt. Boone & Col. Callaway in laying off lots, finished 19 
besides one reserved round a fine spring. Tuesday finished the 
lots in all 54 i e new ones. 

Saturday 22d finished running off all the lots we could con- 
veniently get, to-wit 54 & gave notice of our intention of having 
them drawn for in the evening but as Mr Robt McAfee, his 
brother Saml & some more were not well satisfied whether they 
would draw or not, wanting to go down the river about 50 miles 
near Capt Harrods settlement where they had begun improve- 
ments and left them on the late alarm. Informed by myself in 
hearing of all attending, that such settlements should not entitle 
them to lands from us. Appeared much concerned and at a loss 
what to do. On which the lottery was deferred til next morning 
at sun rise ; thereby giving them time to come to a resolution. 

Sunday 23 Drew lots. 

Tuesday 25. Had a second lottery at the end of which every 
body seemed well satisfied. I had been able by one way or other 
to obtain 4 lots for the fort garden &c. 

Wednesday 26 Other people coming, employed in showing lots 
for their use. Sowed small seed, planted cucumbers &c. 

Thursday 27 Employed in clearing Fort lot &c. Mr Luttrell, 
Nat Henderson & Saml Henderson all that assisted me. Mr Hart 
having made choice of a piece of ground for his own & people's 



174 B oonesborough 

cultivation adjacent to the town lands said, Mr Luttrell reported, 
that he would have nothing to say to the Fort, things were 
managed in such a manner, tho' cannot guess the reason of his 
discontent. 

Friday 28th Mr Luttrell chose a piece of ground about ^ of 
a mile from the fort and set three of his people to work. Two 
remained with me to assist in clearing about where the fort is to 
stand. 

Saturday 29 — Built or rather begun a little house for magazine 
but did not finish it. 

Wednesday May 3d Finished the magazine. Capt John Floyd 
arrived here conducted by one Jo. Drake from a camp on Dicks 
River where he had left about 30 men in his company from Vir- 
ginia, and said he was sent by them to know on what terms they 
might settle our lands — That if terms were reasonable they 
would pitch on some place on which to make corn, or otherwise 
go on the north side of the River. Was much at a loss on account 
of his message as he was Surveyor of Fincastle under Col Preston 
who had exerted himself against us. We thought it most advisable 
to secure them to our interest if possable. Accordingly though the 
season was too far advanced to make much corn, yet promised 
them land. 

We restrained these men to settle some where in a compact 
body for mutual defense, and to be obedient to such laws as should 
from time to time be made for the Government of all the adven- 
turers on our purchase and gave them leave to make choice of any 
lands not before marked by any of our men, or a certain Capt 
& his men who were settled some where about 50 miles west of 
us on the head of Salt River of whom we could form no con- 
jecture, but thought it best to prevent any interuption to him or 
his men 'til we should know, what he intended with respect to us 



Appendix 175 

and our titles. The day before this one Capt Colloines and Mr 
Berry with five other men arrived here from Virginia, and gladly 
treated with us for lands and other indulgences which we granted. 

Thursday 4th Capt Floyd returned home, seemed highly pleased 
with gaining his point and expressed great satisfaction on being 
informed of the plan we proposed for legislation which is no more 
than the peoples sending delegates to act for them in Gen. 
Convention &c. 

Friday 5th — Nothing material — let Mr Wm Cocke have five 
yards & a half oznaburgs off my old tent for which I charge him 
5s 6d Va. money. 

Sunday 7th Went into the woods with my brother's Nat, Saml. 
and Capt Boone after a horse left out on Saturday night. Stayed 
till night & on our return found Capt Harrod & Col Thomas 
Slaughter from Harrods Town on Dicks River. 

Monday 8th Rainey. Was much embarrassed with a dispute 
between the above mentioned. Capt Harrod with about 40 men 
settled on Salt River last year, was driven off and joined the army 
with 30 of his men and being determined to live in this country 
had come down this spring from Monongahala accompanied by 
about 50 men, most of them young persons without families. 
They came on Harrods invitation. These men had got possession 
some time before we got here. The reception our plan of legis- 
lation met with from these gentlemen as well as Capt Floyd gave 
us great pleasure and we therefore immediately set about the 
business and appointed a meeting for Tuesday the 23d Instant 
at Boonesborough and according made out writings for the differ- 
ent towns to sign and wrote to Capt Floyd appointing an elec- 
tion. Harrodsburgh & the Boiling Spring settlement received 
their summons verbally by the gentlemen aforesaid. 

Tuesday 9th Col Slaughter & Capt Harrod took their departure 



176 Boonesborough 

in great good humor. Our plantation business went on as usual, 
some people planting others preparing &c — We found it very 
difficult at first to stop great waste in killing meat. Some would 
kill three, four, five or J^ a dozen buffaloes and not take half 
a horse load from them all. For want of a little obligatory 
law our game as soon as we got here, if not before, was driven 
off very much. Fifteen or 20 miles was as short a distance 
as good hunters thought of getting meat, nay sometimes they 
were obliged to go thirty though by chance once or twice a 
week buffaloe was killed within 5 or six miles. It was some 
pleasure to find wonton men were afraid of discovery & I am 
convinced this fear saved the lives of many buffaloes, elks and 
deer — as to bear, no body wasted any that was fit to eat nor 
did we care about them. — 

Wednesday loth Nothing remarkable. 

Thursday nth — Common occurrences. 

Friday 12th — Old story. 

Saturday 1 3, No scouring of floors, sweeping of yards or scald- 
ing bedsteads here. 

Sunday 14 — No Divine service, our church not being finished — 
that is to say, about 50 yards from the place where I am writing 
and right before me to the south (the River about 50 yards 
behind my camp and a fine spring a little to the west) stands 
one of the finest elms, that perhaps nature ever produced in any 
region. — This tree is placed in a beautiful plain surrounded by a 
turf of fine white clover forming a green to its very stock to 
which there is scarcely anything to be likened. The trunk is 
about 4 feet through to the first branches which are about 9 feet 
high from the ground from thence above it so regularly extends 
its large branches on every side at such equal distances as to 
form the most beautiful tree that imagination can suggest. The 
diameter of its branches from the extream ends is 100 feet — and 



Appendix ^77 

every fair day it describes a semicircle on the heavenly green 
around it, of upward of 400 feet and any time between the hours 
of 10 & 2 100 persons may commodiously seat them selves under 
its branches. 

This divine tree or rather one of the many proofs of the 
existance from all eternity of its Divine Author, is to be our 
church, State-house, — council chamber &c and having many things 
on our hands have not had time to erect a pulpit, seats &c but 
hope by Sunday, Sennight, to perform divine service for the first 
time — in a public manner and that to a set of scoundrels who 
scarcely believe in God or fear a devil if we were to judge from 
most of their looks, words and actions. 

Monday 15th. Express arrived, ten men, including Maj. Bow- 
man, Capt. Bowman and one Capt. Moore. 

Tuesday i6th continue, eating meat without bread, and Should 
be very contented were it not for the absence of four men who 
went down the River by land on Fryday. 

Wednesday 17th Hunters not returned_^ No meat but fat bear. 
Almost starved. Drank a little cofTee & trust to luck for dinner. 
— Am just going to our little plant patches in hopes the greens 
will bear cropping, if so a sumptuous dinner indeed. Mr Galloways 
men got a little spoild buffaloe and elk, which we made out with 
pretty well depending on amendment tomorrow. 

Thursday i8th. 'Tis now 12 o'clock and no news of the hunt- 
ers or the absentees. 3 o'clock. Hunters came in but no news 
of the lost men. 

Friday 19th. Sent off Mr. Stoner with Gapt. Galloway and 
some of his men in search of persons above mentioned. 

Saturday 20th The election for Boonesborough was held this 

afternoon with great regularity when Squire Boone, Daniel Boone, 

William Gocke, Samuel Henderson, William Moore, and Richard 

Gallaway were elected. 

24 



1/8 Boones borough 

Sunday 2ist. Capt. Callomees men returned — had been lost. 
Gave great pleasure. 

Monday 22d One Capt. Thos. Guess arrived from above Pitts- 
burg with six or seven men. 

Tuesday 23d Delegates met from every town. Pleased with 
their stations and in great good humor. 

Wednesday 24th The Convention met. Sent a message ac- 
quainting me that they had chosen Col. Thos Slaughter Chair- 
man, and Mr Matt Jouett Clerk of which I approved. Open'd 
the business by a short speech &c. 

Thursday 2Sth — Three of the members of the committee waited 
on the proprietors with a very sensible address — which asked 
leave to read ; read it and delivered in return an answer &c — 
business went on &c. This day four bills were fabricated & read 
— I for establishing tribunals of justice & recovery of debts — 2d 
for establishing a militia, — 3d for preventing the distruction of 
game &c fourth a law, concerning fees. The delegates very good 
men and much disposed to serve their country. 

Saturday 27th — Finished convent'n in good order — Every 
body pleas'd. 

Sunday 28th Divine service for the first time by the Rev. John 
Lyth, minister of the Gospel, of England. Most of the Dele- 
gates returnd home. 

Monday 29 — No letters from our friends. — Letter with an 
account of the battle at Boston. 

Friday 2d June. Hunters returned, very good meal. 

Sunday 4th Divine service by Mr. Lyth. 

Monday 5 Made out commissions for Harrodsburg, Boiling 
Spring and St. Asaph, both military and civil. 

Tuesday 6 Abundance of people going away — Selling their lots &c. 

Tuesday 13th Col. Boone set off for his family and the young 
men went with him for salt. 



App e n dix 1 79 

Saturday 17 Muster of men at the fort by Capt. Moore. Thirty 
two appeared under arms. 

Sunday 18 Corn planted 26 or 27 of April was tasseled or shot. 
Had a mess of snap beans. Peas ripe. No meat. Two men 
from Va. Found bacon on which with the beans we had an excel- 
lent dinner. 

Wednesday 2 1 Returned home late at night from hunting with 
a load of buffalo. 

Friday 23d Bro. Samuel and two others set off down the river 
in a canoe to hunt elk, our horses being too much fatigued with 
constant riding. 

28th Scarcity of meat. 

30th Meat plenty and many joyful countenances. 

Saturday July i — 1775 Dry weather. People going away. 
Mr. Luttrell and myself set off for Harrodsburg. Were four days 
bogning in the woods seeking the way. Went too near the river 
and much plagued with the hills, cane and bad ways. 

Wednesday July 5 Arrived at Capt. Harrods and found all well. 

Friday 7th set off back in company with Mr Slaughter and 
about 1 2 others who were going in to bring out their families or 
stock. Harrodsburg seemed quite abandoned ; only five men left 
on the spot to guard the crop &c. We suffered in this journey 
a little for want of provisions. — The weather very dry and the 
springs being scarce, water was rarely to be gotten. — Buffaloe 
had abandond their range & were gone into other parts. — When 
we got to this place we found all well, but a scarcity of meat. 
Sundry people gone since we left home & more going. 

Wednesday 12th — Horses being almost worn out my Broth- 
ers Nathaniel and Samuel with some others went up the river in 
a canoe to get meat if possable. Our salt quite out except about 
a quart which I brought from Harrodsburg. The men sent for 
salt not yet returnd, nor any news from the East — Times a little 



i8o BoonesboroiLgh 

melancholy, provisions very scarce, no salt, to enable us to save 
meat at any distance from home, no accou't or arrival from within ; 
Weather very dry — and we not able to raise above fourteen or 
fifteen lighting men at any one time unless they were all sum- 
mond, which could not easily be done without long notice they 
being much dispersed. Hunting &c 

Thursday 13th July. Things as usual. Meat a little difficult to get. 

Thursday 20th Capt. Linn & his company set off down the 
river to Lee's settlement with whom I sent two men for a little 
salt, our men being not yet return'd. 

Sunday 23d Nothing uncommon more than a fellow calld 
Grampus belonging to Mr Luttrel ran away on Thursday which 
was thought nothing of at first — supposing he would return, but 
on Saturday it was discovered that he had stolen Mr Luttrels mare 
(his only riding beast) and was totally gone. 

Monday 24th Mr Luttrel took a resolution of following his man, 
and immediately set off. I have intentions of going home as soon 
as a sufficient number of people come to defend the fort. 

Tuesday 25th — Weather dry & are still in great want. — By 
Capt Linn we are informd that 5 or six men were gone down the 
Ohio to the Falls by order of Capt Bullet. Mr Bullets orders & 
his mens resolutions were to pay no regard to our title but settle 
the land nolens volens. They also inform me that Major Con- 
elly is resolved on the same conduct. 

******** 

The Occurrences of tomorrow & so on you'I find in another 
stitched book cover'd with brown paper & begins with Wednesday 
26th July 1775.' 

'This note concludes all that is known to be extant of this journal. The 
" stitched book " referred to, which would probably complete the journal, has 
never been discovered. 



Appendix i8i 



PROCLAMATION OF LORD DUNMORE (MARCH 21, 1775) 

AGAINST "RICHARD HENDERSON AND 

HIS ABETTORS." 

(From the Virginia Gazette in the Library of Congress.) 

By his Excellency the Right Hon. John, Earl of Dunmore, 
his Majesty's Lieutenant and Governor General of the Colony 
and dominion of Virginia, and Vice Admiral of the same : 

A Proclamation. 
Virginia, to wit. 

Whereas his Majesty did, at the request of the Assembly 
of this colony, permit the Western boundary thereof to be 
extended, as the same has been run and ascertained by Col. 
Donelson, and other surveyors deputed for the purpose ; and 
whereas his Majesty, both for the greater convenience of, & the 
prevention of litigation and disputes, among such persons as 
shall be inclined to settle upon any of his vacant lands, ordered 
that all that tract of land, included within the aforesaid bound- 
ary, and all other vacant lands within this colony, be surveyed 
in districts, and laid out in lots of from one hundered to one 
thousand acres, and as far as the said surveys shall be com- 
pleted, by the surveyors duly authorized, and the surveys thereof 
returned, that the lands so surveyed and allotted be put up to 
public sale, at such time and place as shall be appointed by 
public notice ; and that the highest bidder for such lots and 
parcels of land, at such sales be the purchaser thereof, and be 
entitled to a grant in fee simple of the land so purchased as afore- 



'82 Boonesborough 

said, by letters patent under the great seal of the Colony, sub- 
ject to no conditions or reservations whatever, other than the 
payment of the annual quitrent of one half penny sterling per 
acre, and also of all mines of gold, silver, & precious stones ; and 
whereas advice has been received that one Richard Henderson, 
and other disorderly persons, his associates, under pretense of a 
purchase made from the Indians, contrary to the aforesaid orders 
and regulations of his Majesty, do set up a claim to the lands of 
the Crown within the limits of this Colony ; I have thought fit, 
therefore, to issue this my proclamation, strictly charging all 
justices of peace, sheriffs, and other officers, civil and military, 
to use their utmost endeavours to prevent the unwarrantable and 
illegal designs of the said Henderson and his abettors : and if 
the said Henderson, or others concerned with him, shall take 
possession of, or occupy any lands within the limits of his Maj- 
esty's government of Va. merely under any purchase, or pre- 
tended purchase, made from Indians, without any other title, 
that he or they be required, in his Majesty's name forthwith to 
depart, and relinquish the possession so unjustly obtained ; and in 
case of refusal, and of violent detaining such possession, that he 
or they be immediately fined & imprisoned in the manner the 
laws in such cases direct. 

Given under my hand, and the seal of the Colony, this 21st 
day of March, in the 15th year of his Majesty's reign. (1775) 

God save the King. 

DUNMORE. 



Appendix 183 

K 

JUDGE HENDERSON TO HIS PARTNERS IN 
NORTH CAROLINA. 

Extracts from Letter while En Route to Kentucky. 

(From Hall's Romance of Western History.) 

Gentlemen: Powell's Valley, April 8, 1775. 

Few enterprises of great consequence continue at all times 
to wear a favorable aspect ; ours has met with the common fate, 
from the incautious proceedings of a few headstrong and unthink- 
ing people. On the twenty-fifth of March last, the Indians fired 
upon a small party of men, in camp, near the Louisa, killed two 
and put four others to the route ; and on the 27th, did likewise on 
Daniel Boone's camp, and killed a white man and a negro on the 
spot, but the survivors maintained their ground and saved their 
baggage. But for a more particular account I refer you to Mr. 
Boone's original letter on that occasion, which came to hand 
last night. You scarcely need information that these accidents 
have a bad effect with respect to us. * * * You 

observe from Mr. Boone's letter the absolute necessity of our not 
losing one moment, therefore don't be surprised at not receiving 
a particular account of our journey with the several little mis- 
fortunes and cross accidents, which have caused us to be delayed 
so that we are still one hundred and thirty or one hundred and 
forty miles from our journey's end. We are all in high spirits, 
and on thorns to fly to Boone's assistance, and join him in 
defense of so fine and valuable a country. My only motives 
for stopping, are, first, that you should receive a just repre- 
sentation of the affair, and secondly, to request your immedi- 
ate assistance ; for want of workmen our wagons are laid aside 
at Captain Martin's in this valley ; the chief of our salt and all 
our saltpetre and brimstone are left behind. 



i84 Booncsborottgh 



LETTER OF JUDGE HENDERSON (JUNE 12, 1775) TO 
PROPRIETORS REMAINING IN NORTH CAROLINA. 

(From the Original, Loaned by James Alves to James Hall.) 

Gentlemen, Boonsborough, June 12, 1775. 

It would be needless in me to enter into a detail of every little 
occurrence and cross accident which has befallen us since we left 
Wattauga ; they can afford no instruction, and are too trifling for 
your amusement. No doubt but you have felt great anxiety since 
the receipt of my letter from Powell's Valley. At that time, things 
wore a gloomy aspect ; indeed it was a serious matter, and became 
a little more so, after the date of the letter than before. That 
afternoon I wrote the letter in Powell's Valley, in our march this 
way, we met about 40 people returning, and in about four days 
the number was little short of 100. Arguments and persuasions 
were needless ; they seemed resolved on returning, and traveled 
with a precipitation that truly bespoke their fears. Eight or ten 
were all that we could prevail on to proceed with us, or to follow 
after ; and thus, what we before had, counting every boy and lad, 
amounted to about 40, with which number we pursued our 
journey, with the utmost diligence, for my own part never under 
more real anxiety. Every person almost that we met, seemed to 
be at pains to aggravate the danger of proceeding ; and had we 
given them all a fair hearing, I believe they would, in return for 
the favor, have gotten all our men. Many seemed to be of opinion 
(who had been with Boone) that the men assembled at the mouth 
of Otter creek would get impatient and leave him before we could 
possibly get there, if no other accident befell them ; and with me. 



Appendix 185 

it was beyond a doubt, that our right, in effect, depended on 
Boone's maintaining his ground — at least until we could get to 
him. Here, gentlemen, your imagination must take the burden 
off my hands, and paint what I am unable to describe. You need 
not be afraid of giving scope to your fancy ; it is impossible to 
make the picture worse than the original. Every group of trav- 
elers we saw, or strange bells which were heard in front, was 
a fresh alarm ; afraid to look or inquire, lest Captain Boone 
or his company was amongst them, or some disastrous account of 
their defeat. The slow progress we made with our packs, rendered 
it absolutely necessary for some person to go on and give assur- 
ance of our coming, especially as they had no certainty of our 
being on the road at all ; or had even heard whether the Indians 
had sold to us or not. It was owing to Boone's confidence in us, 
and the people's in him, that a stand was ever attempted in order 
to wait for our coming. The case was exceedingly distressing : we 
had not a fellow that we could send on a forlorn hope in our whole 
camp : all our young men had sufficient employ with the pack- 
horses ; and, the truth is, very few would have gone, if they had 
been totally idle. Distress generally has something in store when 
it is least expected ; it was actually the case with us. Mr. Will- 
iam Cocke, (with whom some of you are acquainted,) observing 
our anxiety on that account, generously offered to undertake the 
journey himself, and deliver a letter to Captain Boone, with all 
the expedition in his power. This offer, extraordinary as it was, we 
could by no means refuse — it was not a time for much delicacy ; 
a little compliment and a few very sincere thanks, instantly given, 
preceded a solemn engagement to set off next morning ; and if he 
escaped with his life, to perform the trust. The day proved dark 
and rainy ; and I own, Mr. Cocke's undertaking appeared a little 
more dangerous than the evening before — in spite of affectation, 

25 



i86 Boonesborough 

it was plain he thought^ so — whether it was from the gloominess of 
the weather, or the time of setting ofT being actually come, or 
what, I cannot tell ; but perhaps a little of both. Indeed, I rather 
suspect there is some little secondary mischievous passion per- 
sonating courage, hankering about the heart of man, that very 
often plays him a double game, by causing him to view dangers 
at a little distance through the wrong end of the glass ; and as 
soon as cool deliberation, by the help of caution, has shifted the 
telescope, and brought the object home to a nearer view, and 
perhaps the dangerous features a little magnified, this monkey 
passion most shamefully deserts and leaves the affair to be man- 
aged as it can. Be that as it may, in these cases we are not 
always without a friend. Pride will, if possible, take up the 
cudgels ; and let the world say what it will of her, she answers 
the end of genuine innate courage, (if there be such a thing,) and 
for aught I know, it is the thing itself. But to return to our sub- 
ject : no time was lost ; we struck whilst the iron was hot, fixed 
Mr. Cocke off with a good Queen Ann's musket, plenty of ammu- 
nition, a tomahawk, a large cuttoe knife, a Dutch blanket, and no 
small quantity of jerked beef. Thus equipped, and mounted on a 
tolerably good horse, on the day of April, Mr. Cocke started 

from Cumberland river, about 130 miles from this place, and 
carried with him, besides his own enormous load of fearful appre- 
hensions, a considerable burden of my own uneasiness. The 
probability of giving Mr. Boone and his men word of our being 
near them, administered great pleasure, and we made the best use 
of our time, following on. 

The general panic that had seized the men we were continually 
meeting, was contagious ; it ran like wild fire ; and, notwithstand- 
ing every effort against its progress, it was presently discovered 
in our own camp ; some hesitated and stole back, privately ; 



Appendix ^^7 

others saw the necessity of returning to convince their friends 
that they were still alive, in too strong a light to be resisted ; 
whilst many, in truth, who have nothing to thank but the fear of 
shame, for the credit of intrepidity, came on, though their hearts, 
for some hours, made part of the deserting company. In this 
situation of affairs, some few, of genuine courage and undaunted 
resolution, served to inspire the rest ; by help of whose example, 
assisted by a little pride and some ostentation, we made a shift 
to march on with all the appearance of gallantry, and, cavalier 
like, treated every insinuation of danger with the utmost con- 
tempt. It soon became hibitual ; and those who started in the 
morning, with pale faces and apparent trepidation, could lie 
down and sleep at night in great quiet, not even possessed of 
fear enough to get the better of indolence. There is a mistaken 
notion amongst the vulgar, with respect to courage, which cannot 
be eradicated but by dint of experiment ; all watching, when it 
comes to be put in practice, has to them the appearance of 
cowardice ; and that it is beneath a soldier to be afraid of any 
thing, especially when a little fatigued. They would all agree 
in the morning, that it would be highly prudent and necessary 
to keep sentinels around our camp at night ; but a hearty meal 
or supper (when we could get it) and good fires, never failed 
putting off the danger for at least 24 hours ; at which time it 
was universally agreed, on all hands, that a watch at night 
would be indispensably necessary. Human nature is eternally 
the same ; a death-bed repentance and a surprised camp are so 
nearly assimilated, that you may safely swear they arise from 
the same cause. Without further speculation, we have been so 
fortunate, hitherto, as to escape both. I wish from my soul, 
that they may not be in league to come together. Never was 
fairer opportunity, as to the one, and you may form a tolerable 



i88 Boonesborough 

judgment as to the other ; the western waters having, as yet, 
produced no visible alteration with respect to morals or Christian 
charity amongst us. It will no doubt surprise you, but it is 
nevertheless true, that we are in no posture of defence or 
security at this time ; and, for my own part, do not much 
expect it will ever be effected, unless the Indians should do us 
the favor of annoying us, and regularly scalping a man every 
week until it is performed ; if the intervals should be longer, the 
same spirit of indolence and self-security, which hath hitherto 
prevailed, would not only continue, but increase. To give you 
a small specimen of the disposition of the people, it may be 
sufficient to assure you, that when we arrived at this place, we 
found Captain Boone's men as inattentive on the score of fear, 
(to all appearances), as if they had been in Hillsborough. A 
small fort only wanting two or three days' work to make it tol- 
erably safe, was totally neglected on Mr. Cockes arrival ; and 
unto this day remains unfinished, notwithstanding the repeated 
applications of Captain Boone, and every representation of 
danger from ourselves. The death of poor Tivitty and the rest, 
who at the time you were informed, became sacrifices to indis- 
cretion, had no more effect than to produce one night's watching 
after they got to Otter creek ; not more than ten days after the 
massacre. Our plantations extend near two miles in length, on 
the river and up a creek. Here people work in their different 
lots ; some without their guns, and others without care or 
caution. It is in vain for us to say any thing more about the 
matter ; it cannot be done by words. We have a militia law, 
on which I have some dependence ; if that has no good effect, 
we must remain for some time much at the mercy of the 
Indians. Should any successful attempt be made on us, Captain 
Hart, I suppose, will be able to render sufficient reasons to the 



Appendix 189 

surviving company, for withdrawing from our camp, and refusing 
to join in building a fort for our mutual defence. This repre- 
sentation of our unguarded and defenceless situation is not all 
that seems to make against us. Our men, under various pre- 
tences, are every day leaving us. It is needless to say any thing 
against it ; many of them are so much determined that they sell 
their rights for saving land on our present terms, to others who 
remain in their stead, for little or nothing ; nay, some of them 
are resolved to go, and some are already gone, and given up 
all pretensions for this season, and depend on getting land on 
the next fall's terms. Our company has dwindled from about 
eighty in number to about fifty odd, and I believe in a few days 
will be considerably less. Amongst these I have not heard one 
person dissatisfied with the country or terms ; but go, as they 
say, merely because their business will not admit of longer delay. 
The fact is, that many of them are single, worthless fellows, and 
want to get on the other side of the mountains, for the sake of 
saying they have been out and returned safe, together with the 
probability of getting a mouthful of bread in exchange for their news. 
Having given you a slight view of one side of the question, 
it may not be amiss to turn the subject over and see what may 
be said on the other hand. Notwithstanding all our negligence, 
self-security, scarcity of men, and whatever else may be added 
against us, I cannot think but we shall carry the matter 
through, and be crowned with success. My reasons for this 
opinion, calls for in you, a kind of knowledge of the geography 
of our country. Those who have no just idea of this matter 
may be aided by Captain Hart. We are seated at the mouth 
of Otter creek, on the Kentucky, about 150 miles from the Ohio. 
To the west, about 50 miles from us, are two settlements, 
within six or seven miles one of the other. There were, some 



I90 BoofiesboroMgk 

time ago, about lOO at the two places; though now, per- 
haps, not more than 60 or 70, as many of them are gone up 
the Ohio for their families, &c. ; and some returned by the way 
we came, to Virginia and elsewhere. These men, in the course 
of hunting provisions, lands, &c., are some of them constantly 
out, and scour the woods from the banks of the river near forty 
or fifty miles southward. On the opposite side of the river, and 
north from us, about 40 miles, is a settlement on the crown 
lands, of about 19 persons ; and lower down, towards the Ohio, 
on the same side, there are some other settlers, how many, or 
at what place, I can't exactly learn. There is also a party of 
about 10 or 12, with a surveyor, who is employed in searching 
through that country, and laying off officers' lands ; they have 
been more than three weeks within ten miles of us, and will be 
several weeks longer ranging up and down that country. Now, 
taking it for granted, that the Cherokees are our friends, which I 
most firmly believe, our situation exempts us from the first 
attempt or attack of any other Indians. Colonel Harrod, who 
governs the two first mentioned settlements, (and is a very good 
man for our purpose), Colonel Floyd, (the surveyor), and myself, 
are under solemn engagements to communicate, with the utmost 
despatch, every piece of intelligence respecting danger or sign of 
Indians, to each other. In case of invasion of Indians, both the 
other parties are instantly to march and relieve the distressed, if 
possible. Add to this, that our country is so fertile, the growth 
of grass and herbage so tender and luxuriant that it is almost 
impossible for man or dog to travel, without leaving such sign 
that you might, for many days, gallop a horse on the trail. To 
be serious, it is impossible for any number of people to pass 
through the woods without being tracked, and of course dis- 
covered, if Indians, for our hunters all go on horseback, and 



Appendix 191 

could not be deceived if they were to come on the trace of 
footmen. From these circumstances, I think myself in a great 
measure secure against a formidable attack ; and a few skulkers 
could only kill one or two, which would not much affect the 
interest of the company. 

Thus, gentlemen, you have heard both sides of the question, 
and can pretty well judge of the degree of danger we are in. 
Let your opinions be as they may on this point, by no means 
betray the least symptom of doubt to your most intimate friends. 
If help is ever wanting, it will be long before succour can 
come from you, and therefore every expense of that kind super- 
flous and unnecessary. If we can maintain our ground until 
after harvest in Virginia, I will undertake for ever after to defend 
the country against every nation of red people in the world, 
without calling on the company for even a gun-flint. 

Here I must beg the favor of your turning back with me to 
Powell's Valley. Our anxiety at that time is now of very little 
concern to you ; but the impressions still remain on my mind, 
and indeed I would not wish to get clear of them in a little 
time. It learnt me to make an estimate of the probable value 
of our country ; to see the imminent danger of losing it forever, 
and presented me with a full view of the ridiculous figure we 
should cut in the world, in case of failure. With respect to the 
real consequence of such a disappointment, I could not so well 
judge for the company in general, as for myself, but thought it 
too serious an affiair with respect to us all, to be tamely given 
up without the fire of a single gun, or something like an attempt 
to take possession and defend our rights, so long, at least, as 
we should find our posts tenable. 

Though the danger Mr. Cocke exposed himself to in render- 
ing this piece of service to the company, dwelt on me for some 



192 Boojiesborough 



time, yet having despatched a messenger to Captain Boone was 
a matter of such consolation, that my burthen from that 
time was much Hghtened. We soon found, by his letters on the 
road, that he had a companion, and went on very well (a small 
stoppage by waters excepted). On Thursday, the 20th April, 
found him with Captain Boone and his men at the place appointed, 
where he had related the history of his adventures, and come in 
for his share of applause ; here it was that the whole load, as 
it were, dropped off my shoulders at once, and I questioned if a 
happier creature was to be found under the sun. Why do I 
confine it to myself ; it was general ; the people in the fort, as 
well as ourselves, down to an old weather-beaten negro, seemed 
equally to enjoy it. Indeed it was natural for us, after being 
one whole month, without intermission, traveling in a barren 
desert country, most of the way our horses packed beyond 
their strength ; no part of the road tolerable, most of it either hilly, 
stony, slippery, miry, or bushy ; our people jaded out and dis- 
pirited with fatigue, and what was worse, often pinched for 
victuals. To get clear of all this at once, was as much as 
we could well bear ; and though we had nothing here to refresh 
ourselves with, but cold water and lean buffalo beef, without 
bread, it certainly was the most joyous banquet I ever saw. 
Joy and festivity was in every countenance, and that vile 
strumpet, envy, I believe, had not found her way into the 
country. 

By this time, gentlemen, I make no doubt but you would 
be glad that I would change my subject, and enter on some- 
thing more interesting. You want a description of our country, 
soil, air, water, range, quantity of good land, disposition of the 
people here, what probability of keeping possession and avail- 
ing ourselves of the purchase, how much money can be 



Appendix 193 

immediately raised towards defraying the first purchase, and, 
if any, overplus that will remain on hand for the use of the 
copartners, &c. &c. &c. These, sirs, are matters of the utmost 
importance, and many of them deserve your most serious 
attention. With respect to the country, Mr. Hart, who brings 
this, will give you ample satisfaction. All that I shall 
say about it is, that it far e.xceeds the idea which I had 
formed of it ; and indeed it is not surprising, for it is not in 
the power of any person living to do justice to the fertility 
of the soil, beauty of the country, or excellence of its range ; 
let it suffice, that we have got a country of good land, with 
numberless advantages and inducements to a speedy popula- 
tion ; that this country ig large enough, and surely will be 
settled immediately on some principles or other : the grand 
affair, on our part, is to manage matters so as to have our 
rights acknowledged, and continue lords of the soil. Every 
thing has succeeded to my wish with respect to title. 
The torrent from Virginia appears to be over, and gentle- 
men of considerable fortune, from thence, are some of 
them come, and others coming, with design to purchase 
under us, as they cannot come within the indulgences to 
adventurers of this season ; and applications are daily making 
for the next year's price. Many of them are returned home, 
and would have been much dissatisfied, if I had not promised 
them, on my word and honor, that the terms should be 
immediately published in all the Williamsburg papers. 



26 



194 Boonesborough 



M 

LETTER TO PATRICK HENRY FROM HENDERSON & CO., 

APRIL 26, 1775. 

( Copied by James Hall from the Original.) 

Hillsborough, April 26, 1775. 
Sir, — The late meeting of the delegates, from the several 
counties, cities, and boroughs, in his majesty's antient Colony 
and Dominion of Virginia, at Richmond, was an event which 
raised the expectations and attracted the attention of the whole 
British America, as well on account of the acknowledged wisdom 
and public integrity of the delegates, as the important and inter- 
esting purposes of that numerous and respectable Convention. 
The copartners in the purchase of lands, on Louisa, from the 
Indians, neither intending by their distant and hazardous enter- 
prize, to revolt from their allegiance to their sovereign, nor yet to 
desert the grand and common cause of their American brethren 
and fellow subjects, in their manly and glorious struggle for the 
full enjoyment of the natural rights of mankind, and the ines- 
timable liberties and priviledges of our happy constitution, were 
anxious to know the result of the wise and mature deliberations 
of the Convention, and particular in their enquiries concerning 
the several matters which became the subject of consideration in 
that august assembly. It was not long before we learnt the 
particulars from some of the members, and that the minute cir- 
cumstances of our contract with the Cherokee Indians had 
occasionally been moved and debated. The true point of view 
in which, we are told, you, with several other gentlemen, con- 
ceived the nature of the contract, and the eloquence and good 
sense with which you defended, and the liberal principles on 
which you supported our claim to the benefit of our engagement 
with the Indians, in addition to the universal applause of the 
whole continent, for your noble and patriotick exertions, give you 



Appendix '95 

an especial claim to our particular acknowledgements, of which 
we take this earliest opportunity of begging your acceptance. It 
would, Sir, have afforded us the most singular satisfaction to 
have had it in our power to give you a more substantial evidence 
of our gratitude. Yet we conceive the generous disinterestedness 
of your principles and publick conduct to be such, that even our 
thanks may be more than you expected or wished for. We 
hope, however, that our wishes to make known our gratitude to 
you, will be considered as a sufficient apology for our having 
given you the trouble of this letter. 

Convinced that our purchase is neither against the laws of our 
country, nor the principles of natural justice and equity, and 
conscious to ourselves of the uprightness of our intentions, we 
totally disregard the reproaches thrown out against us by ill- 
informed or envious and interested persons ; and now encouraged 
by the approbation of the respectable Provincial Congress of 
Virginia, we shall hereafter pursue with eagerness what we at 
first adopted with caution. 

We beg that you will pardon the length of this letter, and 
that you will do us the honor to believe, that we are, with the 
highest sense of gratitude for the part you have taken in favor 
of our hazardous enterprise, and with the greatest respect and 
esteem for your eminent and distinguished character and reputa- 
tion, among the vigilant guardians and illustrious patrons of 
American liberty, 

Sir your most obliged and very mo. devoted h'ble serv'ts, 

Richard Henderson. Nath'l Hart. 
Thomas Hart. David Hart. 

John Williams. Lend. H. Bullock. 

James Hogg. John Luttrell. 

Wm. Johnston. 
To Patrick Henry, Esq., Hanover County, Va. 
N. B. — A copy of the above letter sent to Thos. Jefferson, 
Esqr., Virginia. 



196 Boonesborough 



N 

JOURNAL OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE HOUSE OF 

DELEGATES OR REPRESENTATIVES OF THE 

COLONY OF TRANSYLVANIA, 

Begun on Tuesday the 23D of May, in the Year of Our Lord 

Christ 177s, and in the Fifteenth Year of 

THE Reign of His Majesty, King 

of Great Britain. 

(Copy of the Original. Furnished by James Alves' to Mann 
Butler in 1835.) 

The proprietors of said colony having called and required an 
election of Delegates or Representatives to be made for the pur- 
pose of legislation, or making and ordaining laws and regulations 
for the future conduct of the inhabitants thereof, that is to say, 
for the town of Boonesborough six members, for Harrodsburg 
three, for the Boiling Spring settlement four, for the town of St. 
Asaph four, and appointed their meeting for the purpose aforesaid, 
on the aforesaid 23d of May, Anno Domini 17 JS : — 

It being certified to us here this day, by the secretary, that 
the following persons were returned as duly elected for the several 
towns and settlements, to-wit : 

For BoonesborougJi, For Harrodsburg, 

Squire Boone, Thomas Slaughter, 

Daniel Boone, John Lythe, 

William Cocke, Valentine Harmon, 

Samuel Henderson, James Douglass ; 

William Moore, and 
Richard Callaway ; 

'James Alves was a descendant of James Hogg and the legal repre- 
sentative of Hogg and other members of the Transylvania Company in 
the matter of lots in the town of Henderson, Kentucky. Certain papers 
of said Company and of Judge Henderson were in Mr. Alves' possession. 



Appendix 197 

For Boiling Spring, For St. Asaph, 

James Harrod, John Todd, 

Nathan Hammond, Alexander Spotswood Dan- 

Isaac Hite, and dridge, 

Azariah Davis ; John Floyd, and 

Samuel Wood. 
Present — Squire Boone, Daniel Boone, Samuel Henderson, 
William Moore, Richard Callaway, Thomas Slaughter, John Lythe, 
Valentine Harmon, James Douglass, James Harrod, Nathan Ham- 
mond, Isaac Hite, Azariah Davis, John Todd, Alexander Spots- 
wood Dandridge, John Floyd, and Samuel Wood, who took their 
seats at convention. 

The House unanimously chose Colonel Thomas Slaughter 
Chairman, and Matthew Jouett Clerk, and after divine service 
was performed by the Rev. John Lythe, the House waited on 
the proprietors and acquainted them that they had chosen Mr. 
Thomas Slaughter Chairman, and Matthew Jouett Clerk, of which 
they approved ; and Colonel Richard Henderson, in behalf of 
himself and the rest of the proprietors, opened the convention 
with a speech, a copy of which, to prevent mistakes, the Chair- 
man procured. 

Ordered, that said speech be read — read the same which follows: 

Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Convention : 

You are called and assembled at this time for a noble and an 
honorable purpose — a purpose, however ridiculous or idle it 
may appear at first view, to superficial minds, yet is of the most 
solid consequence ; and if prudence, firmness, and wisdom are 
suffered to influence your councils and direct your conduct, the 
peace and harmony of thousands may be expected to result from 
your deliberations ; in short, you are about a work of the utmost 
importance to the well-being of this country in general, in which 



198 Boonesborough 

the interest and security of each and every individual is insep- 
arably connected ; for that state is truly sickly, politically speak- 
ing, whose laws or edicts are not careful equally of the different 
members, and most distant branches, which constitute the one 
united whole. 

Nay, it is not only a solecism in politics, but an insult to com- 
mon sense, to attempt the happiness of any community, or com- 
posing laws for their benefit, without securing to each individual 
his full proportion of advantage arising out of the general mass ; 
thereby making his interest (that most powerful incentive to the 
actions of mankind) the consequence of obedience : this at once 
not only gives force and energy to legislation, but as justice is, 
and must be eternally the same, so your laws, founded in wisdom, 
will gather strength by time, and find an advocate in every wise 
and well-disposed person. 

You, perhaps, are fixing the palladium, or placing the first 
corner-stone of an edifice, the height and magnificence of whose 
superstructure is now in the womb of futurity, and can only 
become great and glorious in proportion to the excellence of its 
foundation. These considerations, gentlemen, will, no doubt, ani- 
mate and inspire you with sentiments worthy the grandeur of 
the subject. 

Our peculiar circumstances in this remote country, surrounded 
on all sides with difficulties, and equally subject to one common 
danger, which threatens our common overthrow, must, I think, in 
their effects, secure to us an union of interests, and, consequently, 
that harmony in opinion, so essential to the forming good, wise, 
and wholesome laws. If any doubt remain amongst you with 
respect to the force or efficacy of whatever laws you now, or 
hereafter make, be pleased to consider that all power is orginally 
in the people ; therefore, make it their interest, by impartial and 



Appendix 199 

beneficial laws, and you may be sure of their inclination to see 
them enforced. For it is not to be supposed that a people, 
anxious and desirous of having laws made, — who approve of the 
method of choosing delegates, or representatives, to meet in gen- 
eral convention for that purpose, can want the necessary and 
concomitant virtue to carry them into execution. 

Nay, gentlemen, for argument's sake, let us set virtue for a 
moment out of the question, and see how the matter will then 
stand. You must admit that it is, and ever will be, the interest 
of a large majority that the laws should be esteemed and held 
sacred ; if so, surely this large majority can never want inclina- 
tion or power to give sanction and efficacy to those very laws, 
which advance their interest and secure their property. And now, 
Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the convention, as it is indis- 
pensably necessary that laws should be composed for the regula- 
tion of our conduct, as we have a right to make such laws 
without giving offense to Great Britain, or any of the American 
colonies, without disturbing the repose of any society or com- 
munity under heaven ; if it is probable, nay, certain, that the 
laws may derive force and efficacy from our mutual consent, and 
that consent resulting from our own virtue, interest, and con- 
venience, nothing remains but to set about the business immedi- 
ately, and let the event determine the wisdom of the undertaking. 

Among the many objects that must present themselves for 
your consideration, the first in order, must, from its importance, 
be that of establishing courts of justice, or tribunals for the 
punishment of such as may offend against the laws you are 
about to make. As this law will be the chief corner-stone in the 
ground-work or basis of our constitution, let us in a particular 
manner recommend the most dispassionate attention, while you 
take for your guide as much of the spirit and genius of the laws 



200 Boonesborotigh 

of England, as can be interwoven with those of this country. 
We are all Englishmen, or, what amounts to the same, ourselves 
and our fathers have, for many generations, experienced the 
invaluable blessings of that most excellent constitution, and surely 
we can not want motives to copy from so noble an original. 

Many things, no doubt, crowd upon your minds, and seem 
equally to demand your attention ; but next to that of restrain- 
ing vice and immorality, surely nothing can be of more impor- 
tance than establishing some plain and easy method for the recovery 
of debts, and determining matters of dispute with respect to prop- 
erty, contracts, torts, injuries, etc. These things are so essential, 
that if not strictly attended to, our name will become odious 
abroad, and our peace of short and precarious duration ; it would 
give honest and disinterested persons cause to suspect that there 
was some colorable reason, at least, for the unworthy and scan- 
dalous assertions, together with the groundless insinuations con- 
tained in an infamous and scurrilous libel lately printed and 
published, concerning the settlement of this country, the author 
of which avails himself of his station, and under the specious 
pretense of proclamation, pompously dressed up and decorated in 
the garb of authority, has uttered invectives of the most malignant 
kind, and endeavors to wound the good name of persons, whose 
moral character would derive little advantage by being placed in 
competition with his, charging them, among other things equally 
untrue, with a design "of forming an asylum for debtors and 
other persons of desperate circumstances;" placing the proprie- 
tors of the soil at the head of a lawless train of abandoned vil- 
lains, against whom the regal authority ought to be exerted, and 
every possible measure taken to put an immediate stop to so 
dangerous an enterprise. 

I have not the least doubt, gentlemen, but that your conduct 



Appendix 201 

in this convention will manifest the honest and laudable intentions 
of the present adventurers, whilst a conscious blush confounds 
the willful calumniators and officious detractors of our infant, 
and as yet, little community. 

Next to the establishment of courts or tribunals, as well for the 
punishment of public offenders as the recovering of just debts, 
that of establishing and regulating a militia, seems of the greatest 
importance ; it is apparent, that without some wise institution, 
respecting our mutual defense, the different towns or settlements 
are every day exposed to the most imminent danger, and liable 
to be destroyed at the mere will of the savage Indians. Nothing, 
I am persuaded, but their entire ignorance of our weakness and 
want of order, has hitherto preserved us from the destructive 
and rapacious bands of cruelty, and given us an opportunity at 
this time of forming secure defensive plans to be supported and 
carried into execution by the authority and sanction of a well- 
digested law. 

There are sundry other things, highly worthy your considera- 
tion, and demand redress ; such as the wanton destruction of our 
game, the only support of life amongst many of us, and for want 
of which the country would be abandoned ere to-morrow, and 
scarcely a probability remain of its ever becoming the habitation 
of any Christian people. This, together with the practice of 
many foreigners, who make a business of hunting in our country, 
killing, driving off, and lessening the number of wild cattle and 
other game, whilst the value of the skins and furs is appropriated 
to the benefit of persons not concerned or interested in our set- 
tlement : these are evils, I say, that I am convinced can not 
escape your notice and attention. 

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the convention, you may 
assure yourselves that this new-born country is an object of the 

27 



202 Booiiesborough 

most particular attention of the proprietors here on the spot, as 
well as those on the other side of the mountains ; and that they 
will most cheerfully concur in every measure which can in the 
most distant and remote degree promote its happiness or contrib- 

ute to its grandeur. Richard Henderson. 

May 23, 1775. 

Ordered, that Colonel Callaway, Mr. Lythe, Mr. Todd, Mr. 
Dandridge, and Mr. Samuel Henderson, be a committee to draw 
up an answer to the proprietors' speech. 

May 25th. Mr. Todd produced to the house an answer (drawn 
up by the committee) to the proprietors' speech, and being 
approved of by the committee, ordered, that Mr. Todd, Mr. 
Cocke, and Mr. Harrod, wait on the proprietors with an answer 
to their address which is as follows : 

Colonel Richard Hendersoti and Company — Gentlemen — 

We received your speech with minds truly thankful for the 
care and attention you express towards the good people of this 
infant country, whom we represent. Well aware of the confu- 
sion which would ensue the want of rules for our conduct in life, 
and deeply impressed with a sense of the importance of the trust 
our constituents have reposed in us, though laboring under a 
thousand disadvantages, which attend prescribing remedies for 
disorders, which already call for our assistance, as well as those 
that are lodged in the womb of futurity. Yet the task, arduous 
as it is, we will attempt with vigor, not doubting but unanimity 
will insure us success. 

That we have an absolute right, as a political body, without 
giving umbrage to Great Britain, or any of the colonies, to frame 
rules for the government of our little society, can not be doubted 
by any sensible, unbiassed mind — and being without the jurisdic- 



App e n dix 203 

tion of, and not answerable to any of his Majesty's courts, the 
constituting tribunals of justice shall be a matter of our first 
contemplation ; and as this will be a matter of the greatest 
importance, we will still keep in the genius and spirit of the 
English laws, which happy pattern it shall be our chief care to 
copy after. 

Next to the restraint of immorality, our attention shall be 
directed towards the relief of the injured as well as the creditor, 
nor will we put it in the power of calumny and scurrility to say, 
that our country is an asylum for debtors or any disorderly persons. 

Nor shall we neglect, by regulating a militia, as well as the 
infancy of our country will permit, to guard against the hostilities 
and incursions of our savage enemies, and at the same time, to 
be cautious to preserve the game of our country, so essentially 
necessary for the subsistence of the first adventurers. 

Conscious, gentlemen, of your veracity, we can not express the 
satisfaction we experience, that the proprietors of this promising 
colony are so ready to concur with us in any measure which may 
tend to promote its happiness and contribute to its grandeur. 

Thomas Slaughter, Chairman. 

To which Colonel Henderson returned the following answer : 
Mr. Ckairmatt afid Gentlemen of the Convention — 

From the just sense of the nature and importance of the trust 
reposed in you by your constituents, and your laudible and truly 
patriotic resolution of exerting your abilities in the service of your 
country, we derive the most sanguine hopes. 

Arduous as the task is, every difficulty must give way to per- 
severance, whilst your zeal for the public good is tempered with 
that moderation and unanimity of opinion, so apparent in your 
conduct. 



/ 



204 Boonesborough 

We, gentlemen, loojc with infinite satisfaction on this happy 
presage of the future fehcity of our infant country, and hope to 
merit a continuation of that confidence you are pleased to express 
in our veracity and good intentions. 

While our transactions have credit for the integrity of our 
desires, we can not fail uniting with the delegates of the good 
people of this country, fully persuaded that the proprietors are 
zealously inclined to contribute every thing in their power which 
may tend to render it easy, prosperous, and flourishing. 

Richard Henderson, 
May 25th, 1775. Yor himself and the company. 

On motion made, ordered, that Mr. Todd have leave to bring 
in a bill for the establishment of Courts of Judicature, and regu- 
lating the practice therein ; ordered, that Mr. Todd, Mr. Dan- 
dridge, Mr. Calloway, and Mr. Henderson, do bring in a bill for 
that purpose. 

On motion of Mr. Douglass, leave is given to bring in a bill for 
regulating a militia ; ordered, that Mr. Floyd, Mr. Harrod, Mr. 
Cocke, Mr. Douglass, and Mr. Hite, be a committee for that purpose. 

On motion of Mr. Daniel Boone, leave is given to bring in a 
bill for preserving game, &c. ; ordered, that Mr. Boone, Mr. 
Davis, Mr. Harmon, Mr. Hammond, and Mr. Moore, be a com- 
mittee for that purpose. 

The bill for establishing courts of judicature, and regulating 
the practice therein, brought in by the committee, and read by 
Mr. Todd — passed the first time — ordered to be referred for a 
second reading. 

The bill for establishing and regulating a militia, brought in 
by the committee, read by Mr. Floyd — ordered to be read by 
the clerk — passed the first time — ordered to be referred for a 
second reading. 



App e n dix 205 

The bill for preserving game, brought in by the committee, 
ordered to be read by the clerk — read, and passed the first 
time — ordered to be referred for a second reading. 

Ordered, that the convention be adjourned until to-morrow, 
six o'clock. 

26th May. Met according to adjournment. 
Mr. Robert M'Afee appointed sergeant at arms. 

Ordered, that the sergeant at arms bring John Guess before 
this convention, to answer for an insult offered Colonel Richard 
Calloway. 

The bill for regulating a militia, read the second time, and 
ordered to be engrossed. 

The bill for establishing courts of judicature, and regulating 
the practice therein, read a second time — ordered to be recom- 
mitted, and that Mr. Dandridge, Mr. Todd, Mr. Henderson, and 
Mr. Calloway, be a committee to take it into consideration. 

On motion of Mr. Todd, leave is given to bring in an attach- 
ment bill — ordered, that Mr. Todd, Mr. Dandridge, and Mr. 
Douglass, be a committee for that purpose. 

The bill for establishing writs of attachment, read by the 
clerk, and passed the first time — ordered to be referred for a 
second reading. 

On motion of Mr. Dandridge, leave is given to bring in a 
bill to ascertain clerks' and sheriffs' fees. 

The said bill was read, and passed the first time — ordered to 
be referred for the second reading. 

On motion made by Mr. Todd, ordered, that Mr. Todd, Mr. 
Lythe, Mr. Douglass, and Mr. Hite, be a committee to draw up a 
compact between the proprietors and the people of this colony. 

On motion of Mr. Lythe, leave is given to bring in a bill to 
prevent profane swearing and Sabbath breaking — The same 



2o6 Boofiesborough 

read by the clerk, ordered, that it be recommitted, and that Mr. 
Lythe, Mr. Todd, and Mr. Harrod, be a committee to make 
amendments. 

Mr. Guess was brought before the convention, and reprimanded 
by the chairman. 

Ordered, that Mr. Todd and Mr. Harrod wait on the proprie- 
tors, to know what name for this colony would be agreeable. 
Mr. Todd and Mr. Harrod reported, that it was their pleasure 
that it should be called Transylvania. 

The bill for ascertaining clerks' and sheriffs' fees, read a second 
time, passed — and ordered to be engrossed. 

The attachment bill read a second time, and ordered to be 
engrossed. 

A bill for preserving game, read the second time, and passed — 
ordered to be recommitted, and that Mr. Todd, Mr. Boone, and 
Mr. Harrod, be a committee to take it into consideration. 

The militia bill read a third time, and passed. 

On motion of Mr. Todd, leave is given to bring in a bill for 
the punishment of criminals — ordered, that Mr. Todd, Mr. Dan- 
dridge, and Mr. Lythe, be a committee for that purpose. 

The bill for establishing courts of judicature, and regulating the 
practice therein, read a second time, and ordered to be engrossed. 

On motion of Mr. Boone, leave is given to bring in a bill for 
improving the breed of horses. Ordered that Mr. Boone, Mr. 
Davis, and Mr. Hammond, bring in a bill for that purpose. 

The bill for ascertaining clerks' and sheriffs' fees, read a third 
time, and passed. 

The bill for establishing writs of attachment, read a third time 
and passed. 

On motion, ordered that Mr. Todd have leave to absent him- 
self from this house. 



App e n dix 207 



The bill for the punishment of criminals, brought in by the 
committee, read by the clerk, passed the first time, and ordered 
to be read a second time. 

The bill for establishing courts of judicature, and regulating 
the practice therein, read the third time with amendments, and 
passed. 

The bill for improving the breed of horses, brought in by 
Capt. Boone, read the first time, passed, and ordered to be for 
consideration, etc. 

Ordered, that the convention adjourn until to-morrow, six 
o'clock. 

Met according to adjournment. 

The bill to prevent profane swearing and Sabbath-breaking, 
read the second time, with amendments ; ordered to be engrossed. 

The bill for the punishment of criminals, brought in and read ; 
passed the second time, and ordered to be engrossed. 

The bill for the improvement of the breed of horses was read 
a second time, and ordered to be engrossed. 

Ordered, that Mr. Harrod, Mr. Boone, and Mr. Cocke, wait on 
the proprietors, and beg they will not indulge any person what- 
/ ever in granting them lands on the present terms unless they 

comply with the former proposals of settling the country, etc. 

On motion of Squire Boone, leave is given to bring in a bill 
to preserve the range ; ordered, that he have leave to bring in a 
bill for that purpose. 

The following message was received from the proprietors, 
to wit : 

To give every possible satisfaction to the good people, your 
constituents, we desire to exhibit our title deed from the aborig- 
ines and first owners of the soil in Transylvania, and hope you 
will cause an entry to be made of the exhibition in your journals. 



2o8 BoonesboroMgh 

including the corner? and abutments of the lands or country 

contained therein, so that the boundaries of our colony may be 

known and kept on record. 

Richard Henderson. 
Transylvania, 27th May, 1775. 

Ordered, that Mr. Todd, Mr. Douglass, and Mr. Hite, inform 
the proprietors that their request will be complied with ; in 
conseqence of which Colonel Henderson personally attended the 
convention with Mr. John Farrow, attorney in fact for the head 
warriors or chiefs of the Cherokee Indians, who, in presence of 
the convention, made livery and seisin of all the lands, in a deed 
or feofment then produced, bearing date the 7th day of March 
last, 1775. [We omit the boundaries which are here set forth 
on the record, having already given them to our readers in 
another place.] 

A bill for preserving the range, brought in by the committee 
and read, passed the first time ; ordered to be laid by for second 
consideration. 

The bill to prevent profane swearing and Sabbath-breaking, 
read the third time, and passed. 

Ordered, that Mr. Calloway and Mr. Cocke wait on the pro- 
prietors with the laws that have passed, for their perusal and 
approbation. 

The committee, appointed to draw up the compact between 
the proprietors and the people, brought in and read it, as fol- 
lows, viz : 

Whereas, it is highly necessary, for the peace of the proprie- 
tors and the security of the people of this colony, that the powers 
of the one and the liberties of the other be ascertained ; We, 
Richard Henderson, Nathaniel Hart, and J. Luttrel, on behalf of 
ourselves, as well as the other proprietors of the colony of 



App e n dix 209 

Transylvania, of the one part and the representatives of the 
people of said colony, in convention assembled, of the other 
part — do most solemnly enter into the following contract or 
agreement, to wit : 

1. That the election of delegates in this colony be annual. 

2. That the convention may adjourn, and meet again on their 
own adjournment ; Provided, that in cases of great emergency, 
the proprietors may call together the delegates before the time 
adjourned to ; and, if a majority do not attend, they may dis- 
solve them and call a new one. 

3. That, to prevent dissension and delay of business, one 
proprietor shall act for the whole, or some one delegated by 
them for that purpose, who shall always reside in the colony. 

4. That there be perfect religious freedom and general tol- 
eration ; Provided, that the propagators of any doctrine or tenets, 
evidently tending to the subversion of our laws, shall, for such 
conduct, be amenable to, and punished by, the civil courts. 

5. That the judges of the superior or supreme courts be 
appointed by the proprietors, but be supported by the people, 
and to them be answerable for their malconduct. 

6. That the quit-rents never exceed two shillings sterling per 
hundred acres. 

7. That the proprietors appoint a sheriff, who shall be one 
of three persons recommended by the court. 

8. That the judges of the superior courts have, without fee 
or reward, the appointment of the clerks of this colony. 

9. That the judges of the inferior courts be recommended 
by the people, and approved by the proprietors, and by them 
commissioned. 

10. That all other civil and military officers be within the 
appointment of the proprietors. 

28 



2IO Boonesborough 

11. That the office of surveyor-general belong to no person 
interested or a partner in this purchase. 

12. That the legislative authority, after the strength and 
maturity of the colony will permit, consist of three branches, 
to wit : the delegates or representatives chosen by the people ; 
a council, not exceeding twelve men, possessed of landed estate, 
who reside in the colony, and the proprietors. 

13. That nothing with respect to the number of delegates 
from any town or settlement shall hereafter be drawn into 
precedent, but that the number of representatives shall be 
ascertained by law, when the state of the colony will admit of 
amendment. 

14. That the land office be always open. 

15. That commissions, without profit, be granted without fee. 

16. That the fees and salaries of all officers appointed by the 
proprietors, be settled and regulated by the laws of the country. 

17. That the convention have the sole power of raising and 
appropriating all public moneys, and electing their treasurer. 

18. That, for a short time, till the state of the colony will 
permit to fix some place of holding the convention which shall 
be permanent, the place of meeting shall be agreed upon between 
the proprietors and the convention. 

To the faithful and religious and perpetual observance of all 
and every of the above articles, the said proprietors, on behalf 
of themselves as well as those absent, and the chairman of the 
convention on behalf of them and their constituents, have here- 
unto interchangeably set their hands and affixed their seals, the 
twenty-seventh day of May, one thousand seven hundred and 
seventy-five. Richard Henderson. \Seai:\ 

Nathaniel Hart. [Scal.A^ 

J. LUTTRELL. \Seal.'\ 

T. Slaughter, Chair'n. \Seal.'\ 



App e 71 dix 2 1 1 

A bill for improving the breed of horses, read the third time 
and passed. 

The bill for the punishment of criminals, read the third time 
and passed. 

The bill to preserve the range, read the second time, and 
ordered to be engrossed. 

Ordered, that Mr. Lythe wait on Colonel Henderson and the 
rest of the proprietors, with the bill for establishing courts of 
justice and regulating the practice therein. 

The bill to preserve the range, read the third time and passed. 

Ordered, that Colonel Calloway wait on the proprietors with 
the bill for preserving the range. 

Ordered, that a fair copy of the several bills, passed into laws, 
be transmitted to every settlement in this colony that is repre- 
sented. 

Ordered, that the delegates of Boonesboro be a committee 
to see that all the bills that are passed be transcribed, in a 
fair hand, into a book for that purpose. 

Ordered, that the proprietors be waited on by the chairman, 
acquainting them that all the bills are ready for signing. 

The following bills this day passed and signed by the pro- 
prietors, on behalf of themselves and their partners, and the 
chairman of the convention, on behalf of himself and the other 
delegates : 

1. An act for establishing courts of jurisdiction and regulat- 
ing the practice therein. 

2. An act for regulating a militia. 

3. An act for the punishment of criminals. 

4. An act to prevent profane swearing, and Sabbath breaking. 

5. An act for writs of attachment. 

6. An act for ascertaining clerks' and sheriffs' fees. 



212 Boonesborough 

7. An act to preserve the range. 

8. An act for improving the breed of horses. 

9. An act for preserving game. 

All of the above mentioned acts were signed by the chair- 
man and proprietors, except the act for ascertaining clerks' and 
sheriffs' fees, which was omitted by the clerks not giving it in 
with the rest. 

Ordered, that at the next meeting of delegates, if any mem- 
ber be absent and doth not attend, that the people choose one 
to serve in the room of such absent member. 

Ordered, that the convention be adjourned until the first 
Thursday in September next, then to meet at Boonesboro. 

Matthew Jewitt, Clerk. 



O 

MEETING OF THE TRANSYLVANIA PROPRIETORS IN 
NORTH CAROLINA, SEPTEMBER 25, 1775. 

Minutes of Proceedings, Appointments, Regulations, Dona- 
tions OF Land, Election of Delegate to Continental 
Congress, Memorial to the Congress, and 
Petition for Admission as Four- 
teenth Colony. 

(American Archives, Volume IV.) 

At a meeting of the Proprietors of Transylvania held at Ox- 
ford, in the County of Granville, on Monday the 25th day of 
September, Anno Domoni, 1775. 

Pres : Colonel Richard Henderson, Col. Thos. Hart, Col. John 
Williams, Capt. John Luttrell, William Johnston, James Hogg 
and Leonard H. Bullock. 



Appendix 213 

Col. Henderson being unanimously chosen president, they 
took into their consideration the present state of the said Colony 
and made the following resolve, viz : 

Resolved, that Col. John Williams be appointed Agent for the 
Transylvania Company to transact their business in the said 
Colony, and he is accordingly invested with full power by letter 
of Attorney. 

Ordered, That Mr. Williams shall proceed to Boonesborough 
in the said Colony as soon as possible, and continue there until 
the twelfth day of April next ; and to be allowed for his services, 
one hundred and fifty pounds. Proclamation money of North 
Carolina, out of the profits arising from the sale of lands, after 
discharging the Company's present engagements. 

N. B. — In case the Settlement should be broken up by attack 
of Indians, or other enemies so as to render it impossible for Mr. 
Williams to continue there and execute the trust reposed in him, 
it is agreed by the Company, that he shall still be paid the above 
salary at the expiration of three years. 

Resolved : That Mr. Williams be empowered to appoint one 
or more Surveyors, and the other officers of the Land Office, 
for the said Colony, as he may find it necessary. 

Clerks, Surveyors and Chain-Carriers, to be sworn before they 
act. 

Resolved, In case of the death or removal of Mr. Williams, 
that Col. Richard Henderson, Capt. Nathaniel Hart, and Capt. 
John Luttrell, or any one of them, be and are hereby, declared 
Agents for the said Company with the same powers as are given 
to Mr. Williams until a new appointment shall be made by the 
Proprietors. 

Resolved, That the Agent shall not grant any Lands adjoin- 
ing Salt springs, gold, silver, copper, lead, or sulphur mines, 
knowing them to be such. 



214 Boonesborough 

Resolved, That a reservation to the Proprietors, of one-half 
of all gold, silver, copper, lead, and sulphur mines, shall be made 
by the Agent, at granting deeds. 

Resolved, That the Agent shall take a counterpart of all 
deeds granted by him, and shall transmit them to the proprietors, 
residing in the Province of North Carolina, to be audited, with 
his other proceedings, by the Company. 

Resolved, that all surveys shall be made by the four Car- 
dinal points, except where rivers or mountains so intervene as to 
render it too inconvenient ; and that in all cases where one sur- 
vey comes within the distance of eighty poles from another, 
their lines shall join without exception ; and that every survey 
on navigable rivers shall extend two poles out for one pole along 
the river ; and that each survey not on navigable rivers shall not 
be above one-third longer than its width. 

Resolved, That a present of two thousand acres of land 
be made to Col. Daniel Boone, with the thanks of the Proprietors, 
for the signal services he has rendered to the Company. 

Resolved, That the thanks of this Company be presented to 
Col. Richard Calloway, for his spirited and manly behavior in 
behalf of the said Colony ; and that a present of six hundred 
and forty acres of land be made to his younger son. 

Resolved, that James Hogg, Esq., be appointed Delegate to 
represent the said Colony in the Continental Congress, now sit- 
ting at Philadelphia ; and that the following Memorial be pre- 
sented to that august body. 

To the Honorable the Continental Congress Notu Sitting at Phil- 
adelphia. 
The Memorial for Richard Henderson, Thomas Hart, John 

Williams, Nathaniel Hart, John Luttrell, William Johnson, James 



Appendix 215 

Hogg, David Hart and Leonard Henly Bullock, Proprietors of 
Transylvania, sheweth : 

That on the seventeenth day of March last, for a large and 
valuable consideration. Your Memorialists obtained from the 
Cherokee Indians, assembled at Watauga, a grant of a consid- 
erable territory, now called Transylvania, lying on the South side 
of the river Ohio. 

They will not trouble the Honorable Congress with a detail 
of the risks and dangers to which they have been exposed, aris- 
ing from the nature of the enterprise itself, as well as from the 
wicked attempts of certain Governments and their emissaries ; 
they beg leave, only, to acquaint them that, through difficulties 
and dangers, at a great expense, and with the blood of several 
of their followers, they have laid the foundation of a Colony, 
which, however mean in its origin, will, if one may guess from 
present appearances, be one day considerable in America. 

The Memorialists, having made this purchase from the Abo- 
rigines and immemorial possessors, the sole and uncontested own- 
ers of the country in fair and open treaty, and without the viola- 
tion of any British or American law whatever, are determined 
to give it up only with their lives. And though their country be 
far removed from the reach of ministerial usurpation, yet they 
cannot look with indifference on the late arbitrary proceedings 
of the British Parliament. If the United Colonies are reduced, 
or will tamely submit to be slaves, Transylvania will have reason 
to fear. 

The Memorialists by no means forget their allegiance to their 
Sovereign, whose constitutional rights and pre-eminences they will 
support at the risk of their lives. They flatter themselves that the 
addition of a new Colony in so fair and equitable way, and with- 
out any expense to the Crown, will be acceptable to His Most 



2i6 Boonesborough 

Gracious Majesty, and that Transylvania will soon be worthy of 
his Royal regard and protection. 

At the same time, having their hearts warmed with the same 
noble spirit that animates the United Colonies, and moved with 
indignation at the late Ministerial and Parliamentary usurpation, 
it is the earnest wish of the Proprietors of Transylvania to be 
considered by the Parliaments as brethren, engaged in the same 
great cause of liberty and of mankind. And, as by reason of 
several circumstances, needless to be here mentioned, it was 
impossible for the Proprietors to call a convention of the settlers 
in such time as to have their concurrence laid before this Con- 
gress, they here pledge themselves for them, that they will con- 
cur in the measure now adopted by the Proprietors. 

From the generous plan of liberty adopted by the Congress, 
and that noble love of mankind which appears in all their pro- 
ceedings, the Memorialists please themselves that the United 
Colonies will take the infant Colony of Transylvania into their 
protection ; and they, in return, will do everything in their 
power, and give such assistance in the general cause of America 
as the Congress shall judge to be suitable to their abilities. 

Therefore, the Memorialists hope and earnestly request, that 
Transylvania may be added to the number of the United Colonies, 
and that James Hogg, Esq., be received as their delegate, and 
admitted to a seat in the honorable the Continental Congress. 

By order of the Proprietors. 

Richard Henderson, President. 

Resolved, That Mr. Hogg be empowered to treat and con- 
tract with any person or persons who may incline to purchase 
Lands from the Company, and that he be allowed his expenses 
for transacting the above business. 



Appendix 217 

Resolved, That the united thanks of this Company be pre- 
sented to Col. Richard Henderson, Capt. Nathaniel Hart, and 
Capt. John Liittrell for their eminent services and public spir- 
ited conduct in settling the aforesaid Colony. 

Resolved, That from this time to the first day of June, one 
thousand seven hundred and seventy-six, the lands in the said Col- 
ony shall be sold on the following terms : No survey of land shall 
contain more than six hundred and forty acres, (except-"^i par- 
ticular cases) ; and the purchaser shall pay for the entry and war- 
rant of survey two dollars ; for surveying the same and a plot 
thereof, four dollars ; and for the deed and plot annexed, two dol- 
lars. And also shall pay to the said proprietors, their Agent, or 
Receiver, for the time being, at the time of receiving a deed, 
two pounds, ten shillings, sterling, for each hundred acres 
contained in such deed ; also an annual quit-rent of two shil- 
lings, like money, for every one hundred acres, commencing in 
the year 17S0. And that any person who settles on the said 
Lands before the first day of June, 1776, shall have the privilege, 
on the aforesaid conditions, of taking up for himself any quan- 
tity not above six hundred and forty acres ; and for each tax- 
able person he may take with him, and settle there, three hun- 
dred and twenty acres, and no more. 

Resolved, That Colonel Richard Henderson, survey and lay 
off, within the said Colony, in such places and in such quantities 
as he shall think proper, not less than two hundred thousand 
acres, hereafter to be equally divided amongst the copartners 
or their representatives, according to their rateable part, (as fully 
set forth in the Articles of Agreement entered into by the copart- 
ners) ; and that each copartner be permitted, by himself or his 
deputy, to make choice of, and survey in one or more places, any 
quantity of vacant Land in the aforesaid Colony, for his or their 

29 



2i8 Boonesborough 

particular use ; but not above two thousand acres, and that 
agreeable to the aforesaid rateable proportions, unless on the 
same terms, and under the same regulations and restrictions as 
laid down for other purchasers. 

Resolved, That not more than five thousand acres shall be 
sold to any one person who does not immediately settle on the 
said Land ; and that at three pounds, ten shillings sterling per 
hundred, and not more than one hundred thousand acres in the 
whole on these terms. 

Resolved, That the Agent deliver what money he may have 
received for the sale of lands to Col. Thomas Hart, when he 
leaves the said Colony, and that Col. Hart pay what money 
may be due from the Company to the people at Watauga on his 
return ; and that the remainder be applied to the payment of 
the Company's other debts. 

Also that the Agent shall take the first safe opportunity of 
remitting what further sums he may receive thereafter to Will- 
iam Johnston, Treasurer, to be by him applied towards paying 
off the Company's debts. 

Resolved, That William Johnston be empowered to bargain 
and contract with any persons inclining to purchase Lands in 
the said Colony. 

Ordered, That Mr. Johnston do in behalf of the Proprietors, 
accomodate Mr. Peter Hay, merchant, (at Cross Creek, Cum- 
berland County, North Carolina), with a present of one thousand 
acres of Land in the said Colony, for his friendly behavior 
towards the Company ; or in lieu thereof, that Mr. Hay be per- 
mitted to purchase ten thousand acres, without being obliged to 
settle the same, at two pounds, ten shillings, sterling, per hun- 
dred acres, subject to office fees and quit-rents. 

Resolved, That a present of si.x hundred and forty acres of 



Appendix 219 

Land be made to the Reverend Mr. Henry Patillo, on condition 
that he will settle in the said Colony. 

Resolved, That the Agent duly attend to the above Resolves, 
unless when the interest of the Company makes the contrary 
necessary. 

By order of the Proprietors : 

Richard Henderson, President. 



LETTER FROM SILAS DEANE TO JAMES HOGG (NOVEM- 
BER 2, 1775) REGARDING THE GOVERN- 
MENT OF TRANSYLVANIA. 

(From Volume IV of American Archives.) 

November 2nd, 1775. 
Dear Sir : At the time of granting the New England Charters, 
the Crown of Great Britain had no idea of any real interest or 
property in the American Lands. The Pope, as Vicar of Christ, 
pretended very early to have an absolute right in fee simple, to 
the earth and all that was therein, but more particularly to the 
Countries and persons of heretics, which he constantly gave away 
among his favorites. When the Crown of Great Britain threw 
off its submission to the Pope, or, in other words, by setting itself 
at the head of the Church, became Pope of Great Britain, this 
old, whimsically arrogant nation, was, in degree, restrained ; and 
Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1 579, most graciously gave to Sir 
Walter Raleigh all North America, from the lattitude 34° North 
to 48° north ; and extending West to the great Pacific Ocean ; to 
which immense territory she had no more right or title than she 
had to the empire of China. 



220 Boonesborough 

On Sir Walter's attainder, this was supposed to revert to the 
Crown, and in 1606, James I, in consequence of the same prin- 
ciple, granted the South part of the above, to a Company then 
called the London Company ; and in 1620, granted the North- 
ernmost part to a Company called the Plymouth Company, con- 
taining within its bounds all the lands from 40° to 45° north 
lattitude, and West to the South Seas. This Company granted, 
1 63 1, to certain persons, that tract described in this charter, 
which you will see was very liberal, and rendered them (as in 
reality they were) independent of the Crown for holding their 
lands ; they having, at their own expense, purchased or conquered 
them from the natives, the original or sole owners. 

The Settlement of Connecticut began in 1634 when they came 
into a Voluntary Compact of Government, and governed under it, 
until their Charter, in 1662, without any difficulty. They were 
never fond of making many laws ; Nor is it good policy in any 
State, but the worst of all in a new one. The laws, or similar 
ones to those which I have turned down to, are necessary in a 
new Colony, in which the highest wisdom is to increase, as fast 
as possible, the inhabitants, and at the same time to regulate 
thern well. 

The first is to secure the general and inalienable rights of man 
to the settlers ; without this, no inhabitants, worth having, will 
adventure. This, therefore, requires the Closest and earliest 
attention. 

Next to this, is the mode or rule by which civil actions may 
be brought, or the surest ways and means by which every indi- 
vidual may obtain his right. 

Then a provision for the safety of the Community against high 
handed offenders, house breakers, etc. 

There are two ways of regulating a Community ; one by cor- 
recting every offender, and the other to prevent the offense itself ; 



Appendix 221 

to effect the latter, education must be attended to as a matter 
of more importance than all the laws which can be framed, as it 
is better to be able to prevent, than after to correct a disease. 
Peace officers will be necessary, and these ought to be chosen 
by the people, for the people are more engaged to support an 
officer of their own in the execution of his trust, than they will 
ever be in supporting one forced upon them. 

Some regulation of civil course ought early to be made the 
most simple and least expensive is best ; an honest judge will 
support his dignity without a large salary, and a dishonest one 
can have no real dignity at any rate. 

The General Assembly must be the supreme fountain of power 
in such a state, in constituting which, every free man ought to 
have his voice. The elections should be frequent, at least annu- 
ally ; and to this body every officer ought to be amenable for his 
conduct. Every impediment in the way of increase of people 
should be removed, of course marriage must be made easy. 

Overgrown estates are generally the consequence of an unequal 
division of interest, left by a subject at his decease. This is pre- 
vented by an equal, or nearly equal right of inheritance. This has 
taken place in all the New England Colonies, and in Pennsylvania 
to their great emolument. 

All fees of office ought to be stated and known, and they should 
be stated as low as possible. 

Some crimes are so dangerous in their tendency, that capital 
punishments are necessary ; the fewer of these, consistent with 
the safety of the State, the better. 

There ought to be some terms on which a man becomes free 
of the community. They should be easy and simple ; and every 
one encouraged to quahfy himself -n character and interest, to 
comply with them ; and these terms should be calculated to bind 
the person in the strongest manner, and engage him in its interest. 



222 Boonesborotigh 

A new Colony, in the first place, should be divided into small 
townships or districts, each of which ought to be empowered to 
regulate their own internal affairs ; and to have and enjoy every 
liberty and privilege not inconsistent with the whole. 

Tenure of lands is a capital object, and so is the mode of taking 
out grants for, and laying them out. If individuals are permitted 
to engross large tracts, and lay them out as they please, the pop- 
ulation of the country will be retarded. 

Precarious must be the possession of the finest country in the 
world, if inhabitants have not the means and skill of defending it. 
A militia regulation must, therefore, in all prudent policy, be one 
of the first. 

Though entire liberty of conscience ought everywhere to be 
allowed, yet the keeping up among a people a regular and stated 
course of Divine worship has such beneficial effects that the 
encouragement thereof deserves the particular attention of the 
Magistrate. 

Forms of oath are ever best, as they are concise, and carry 
with them a solemn simplicity of appeal to the Divine Being ; 
and to preserve their force, care should be had to avoid too fre- 
quent a repetition of them, and on ordinary occasions. 

The preservation of the peace being the capital object of gov- 
ernment, no man should be permitted on any occasion, to be the 
avenger of the wrongs he has, or conceives he has, received ; 
but if possible, every one should be brought to submit to the 
decision of the law of the country in every private as well as 
public injury. 

Providing for the poor is an act of humanity, but to prevent 
their being numerous and burdensome to society is at once humane 
and an act of the highest and soundest policy ; and to effect it, 
the education of children, and the manners of the lower orders 
are constantly to be attended to. 



Appendix 223 

As, in a well ordered government, every one's person and 
property should be equally secure, so each should pay equally, 
or on the same scale, for the expenses in supporting the same. 

In a new and wild country it will be deemed, perhaps, impos- 
sible to erect schools ; but the consequences are so great and 
lasting that every difficulty ought to be encountered rather than 
give up so necessary, so important an institution. A school will 
secure the morals and manners, and at the same time tend to 
collect people together in society, and promote and preserve 
civilization. 

The throwing a country into towns, and allowing these towns 
particular privileges like corporations in England and America, 
tends to unite the people, and, as in the least family there is, 
generally, the best economy, so these towns will conduct the 
internal and domestic crudentials better than larger bodies, and 
give strength, soundness and solidity to the basis of the State. 

Sir, you have in the foregoing, the outlines of the policy of 
the Connecticut Government, in as concise a view as I could ; the 
great and leading principles of which will, I conceive, apply to 
any new State ; and the sooner they are applied the better it will 
be for the health and prosperity of the rising community. 

An equal and certain security of life, liberty and property, an 
equal share in the rights of legislation, and an equal distribution 
of the benefits resulting from society ; with an early attention to 
the principles, morals and manners of the whole, are the great 
first principles of a good Government, and these well fixed, lesser 
matters will easily and advantageously adjust, as I may say, them- 
selves. I am far from thinking our system is entirely fit for you, 
in every point. It has grown up and enlarged itself, as we have 
grown. Its principle features are worth your attending to ; and, 
if I had leisure, would point out, more particularly which part I 



224 Boonesboroiigh 

think you might adopt immediately, what additions are necessary, 
and why some parts should be rejected. But I will, if possible, 
give you after \our perusal of this, the general head of what, from 
my little reading and observation, I think to be the most simple, 
and consequently, the best plan of government. 

I am, Sir, yours, 
Thursday morning, November 2nd, 1775. ^- Deane. 

Two laws, I see I have run over without noting upon ; the one 
is for punishing vagabonds, \>y setting them to hard labor. The 
other, for the punishment of theft, which you may think too light, 
but I think too severe ; or, in other words, I would avoid infamous 
punishments, such as cropping, branding, whipping, etc., and sub- 
stitute hard labor in their stead. 



JAMES HOGG TO RICHARD HENDERSON, 
JANUARY, 1776. 

Report of the Transylvania "Embassy" to the Continental 

Congress. 

(American Archives, Volume IV.) 

January, 1776. 
Dear Sir : On the 2nd of December I returned hither from 
Philadelphia ; and I have now set down to give you an account 
of my embassy, which you ^vill be pleased to communicate to 
the other gentlemen, our co-partners, when you have an oppor- 
tunit}'. I waited for Messrs. Hooper and Hewes a day and a 
half at Richmond, but they were detained by rainy weather 
for several days, so that they did not overtake me till I was 



Appendix 225 

near Philadelphia, where I was kept two days by heavy rain, 
though they had it dry where they were. It was the 22nd of 
October when we arrived at Philadelphia. In a few days they 
introduced me to several of the Congress gentlemen, among the 
first of whom were, accidentally, the famous Samuel and John 
Adams ; and as I found their opinion friendly to our new Colony, 
I showed them our map, explained to them the advantage of 
our situation, etc., etc. They entered seriously into the matter, 
and seemed to think favorably of the whole ; but the difficulty 
that occurred to us soon appeared to them. "We have peti- 
tioned and addressed the King," said they, "and have entreated 
him to point out some mode of accomodation. There seems to 
be an impropriety in embarrassing our reconciliation with any- 
thing new ; and the taking under our protection a body of people 
who have acted in defiance of the King's proclamations, will be 
looked on as a confirmation of that independent spirit with which 
we are daily reproached." I then showed them our memorial, 
to convince them that we did not pretend to throw off our 
allegiance to the King, but intended to acknowledge his sover- 
eignty whenever he should think us worthy of his regard. They 
were pleased with our memorial, and thought it very proper ; 
but another difficulty occurred. By looking at the map they 
observed that we were within the Virginia Charter. I then told 
them of the fixing of their boundaries, what had passed at 
Richmond in March last, and that I had reason to believe the 
Virginians would not oppose us ; however, they advised me to 
sound the Virginians, as they would not choose to do anything 
in it without their consent. All the Delegates were, at that time, 
so much engaged in the Congresses from morning till night that 
it was some days before I got introduced to the Virginians ; and 
before then I was informed that some of them had said, what- 

30 



226 Boofiesborough 

ever was their own opinion of the matter, they would not consent 
that Transylvania should be admitted as a Colony, and repre- 
sented in Congress until it originated in their Convention, and 
should be approved by their constituents. Some days after this, 
I was told that Messrs. Jefferson, Wythe, and Richard Henry 
Lee, were desirous of meeting with me, which was accordingly 
brought about ; but, unfortunately, Mr. Lee was, by some business, 
prevented from being with us, though I had some conversation 
with him afterwards. I told them that the Transylvania Com- 
pany, suspecting that they might be misrepresented, had sent 
me to make known to the gentlemen of the Congress our friendl}' 
intentions towards the cause of liberty, etc., etc., but said noth- 
ing of our memorial, or my pretentions to a seat in Congress. 
They said nothing in return to me, but seriously examined our 
map, and asked many questions. They observed that our pur- 
chase was within their charter, and gently hinted, that by virtue 
of it, they might claim the whole. This led me to take notice, 
that a few years ago, I had been informed that their assembly 
had petitioned the Crown for leave to purchase from the Cher- 
okees, and to fix their boundaries with them, which was accord- 
ingly done, by a line running from six miles east of the Long 
Island in Holston, to the mouth of the Great Kanawha, for 
which they had actually paid twenty five hundred pounds to the 
Cherokees ; by which purchase, both the Crown and their Assembly 
had acknowledged the property of those islands to be in the 
Cherokees. Besides, said I, our settlement of Transylvania will 
be a great check on the Indians, and consequently be of service 
to the Virginians. 

They seemed to waive the argument concerning the right of 
property ; but Mr. Jefferson acknowledged, that in his opinion, 
our Colony could be no loss to the Virginians, if properly united 



Appendix 227 

to them ; and said, that if his advice was followed, all the use 
they should make of their Charter would be, to prevent any 
arbitrary or oppressive government to be established within the 
boundaries of it ; and that it was his wish to see a free Govern- 
ment established at the back of theirs, properly united with them ; 
and that it should be extended westward to the Mississippi, and 
on each side of the Ohio, to their Charter line, but he would not 
consent that we should be acknowledged by the Congress, until 
it had the approbation of their constituents in Convention, which 
he thought might be obtained ; and that, for that purpose, we 
should send one of our Company to their next Convention. 
Against this proposal, several objections occurred to me, but I 
made none. 

This was the substance of our conference, with which I 
acquainted our good friends, Messrs. Hooper and Hewes, who 
joined me in opinion that I should not push the matter further ; 
and they hinted to me, that, considering the present very critical 
situation of affairs, they thought it was better for us to be uncon- 
nected with them. These gentlemen acted a most friendly part 
all along, and gave a favorable account of our proceedings. 
Indeed I think the Company under great obligations to them, 
and I hope they will take it under their consideration. I was 
frequently with parties of the Delegates, who in general think 
favorably of our enterprise. 

All the wise ones of them, with whom I conversed on the 
subject, are clear in opinion that the property of these lands are 
vested in us by the Indian grant ; but some of them think, that 
by the common law of England, and by the common usage in 
America, the Sovereignty is in the King, agreeable to a famous 
law opinion, of which I was so fortunate as to procure a copy. 
The suffering traders, and others, at the end of last war, obtained 



228 Boonesborough 

a large tract of land from the Six Nations, and other Indians. 
They formed themselves into a Company, (called, I believe, the 
Ohio,) and petitioned the King for a patent, and desired to be 
erected into a Government. His Majesty laid their petition before 
Lord Chancellor Camden and Mr. Charles York, then Attorney 
General, and afterwards Chancellor. Their opinion follows : 

"In respect to such places as have been, or shall be acquired 
by treaty or grant from any of the Indian Princes or Govern- 
ments, your Majesty's letters patent are not necessary ; the 
property of the soil vested in the grantee by the Indian grants, 
subject only to your Majesty's rights of Sovereignty over the 
settlements, as English settlements, and over the inhabitants as 
English subjects, who carry with them your Majesty's law where- 
ever they form Colonies, and receive your Majesty's protection 
by virtue of your Royal charters." 

After an opinion so favorable for them, it is amazing that 
this Company never attempted to form a settlement, unless they 
have procured a charter ; with the hopes of which, it seems, they 
were flattered, from time to time. However, our example has 
roused them, I am told, and they are now setting up for our 
rivals. Depending on the opinion, another company of gentle- 
men, a few years ago, purchased a tract between the Mississippi 
and Ohio, beginning about a league below Fort Chartres, and 
running over towards the mouth of the Wabash ; but whether or 
not their boundary line is above or below the mouth of the 
Wabash, the gentlemen who showed me their deed could not 
tell, as it is not mentioned, but is said to terminate at the old 
Shawanese town, supposed to be only thirty-five leagues above 
the mouth of the Ohio. And the said Company purchased another 
larger tract, lying on the Illinois River. It was from one of this 
Company that I procured a copy of the above opinion, which he 



Appendix 229 

assured me was the genuine one, and is the very same which 
you have heard was in possession of Lord Dunmore, as it was 
their Company that sent it to him, expecting he would join them. 
I was several times with Mr. Deane, of Connecticut, the gen- 
tleman of whom Mr. Hooper told you, when here. He says he 
will send some people to see our country ; and if their report be 
favorable, he thinks many Connecticut people will join us. 

This gentleman is a scholar, and a man of sense and enter- 
prise, and rich ; and I am apt to believe, has some thoughts of 
heading a party of Connecticut adventurers, providing things can 
be made agreeable to him. He is reckoned a good man and 
much esteemed in Congress ; but he is an enthusiast in liberty, 
and will have nothing to do with us unless he is pleased with 
our form of Government. He is a great admirer of the Con- 
necticut Constitution, which he recommended to our consideration, 
and was so good as to favor me with a long letter on that subject' 
a copy of which is enclosed.' You would be amazed to see how 
much in earnest all these speculative gentlemen are about the 
plan to be adopted by the Transylvanians. They entreat, they 
pray, that we make it a free Government, and beg that no 
mercenary or ambitious views in the Proprietors may prevent it. 
Quit-rents, they say, is a mark of vassalage, and hope they will 
not be established in Transylvania. They even threaten us with 
their opposition, if we do not act upon liberal principles when 
we have it so much in our power to render ourselves immortal. 
Many of them advised a law against negroes. 

Enclosed I send you a copy of a sketch by John Adams, = 
which I had from Richard Henry Lee. 

^The letter is herewith published in Appendix P. 
^ See footnote, page 43. 



230 Boonesborough 



REPLY OF JOHN WILLIAMS, AGENT OF THE TRANSYL- 
VANIA PROPRIETORS, TO THE HARRODSBURG 
REMONSTRANCE OF DECEMBER, 1775. 

( Calendar Virginia State Papers. ) 

Boonesborough, January i, 1776. 
To the Gentlemen Inhabitants in & about Harrodsburg : — 

Gentlemen : By the hands of Messrs Col. Abraham Hite Jos 
Bowman Jno Wharton & Wm McAfee we received an Instrument 
of writeing, purporting to be an address to us directed, for the relief 
of Grievances subsisting in the Colony of Transylvania. Respect- 
ing the letting our Lands within the said Colony. Nothing could 
have astonished us more than a Remonstrance of this Kind, at a 
time when we were Endeavoring to pursue every practicable meas- 
ure to prevent any dispute or disquietude in the minds of the 
Inhabitants of this Young and yet feeble Colony and for that End 
had Established rules for the purpose of granting the Lands within 
the same upon as favorable Terms as we can well afford from the 
large price which we purchased them at, the numberless Expenses 
which have, and still must accrue upon the Occasion and the many 
disadvantages we have put Ourselves to, without mentioning the 
many dangers resulting from such hazardous Enterprizes. Con- 
scious to ourselves of the integrity of our Intentions and the 
uprightness of our Conduct in purchasing more Lands and fully 
satisfied with the Right we have Acquired from the Aborigines 
first and Sole Occupants thereof — the Cherokee Indians — From 
the Chief's of whom, by and with the Consent of the whole Nation 
in fair & open Treaty for a large & valuable Consideration, we 
obtained a Deed of Feafment with actual livery and Seasin in due 



Appe7idix 231 

form of law with Quiet and Peacable possession which we still 
Retain and than which right we know of no better, the premises 
acceded to. We flattered ourselves that the modes and Terms 
on which we purpose on letting our Lands within said Colony 
would have met the approbation of every reasonable honest and 
well disposed person who wished to become a purchaser under 
us and an Inhabitant of said Colony. And it is with surprise 
we find persons now Expecting Lands on the Inferior Terms which 
we let them Last Spring to such Persons who ventured out 
with us to take Possession of the Country & Defend us against 
our Savage Enemies untill we Could build Forts make Corn &c 
and thereby give encouragement to others to Emigrate hither 
as many since have done & more about to do. To whom we 
proposed letting Lands (on what we think reasonable Terms) 
To every Person who shall remove here to reside before the year 
1777 for himself 640 Acres of Land and for each Taxable Person 
he shall bring with him & Employ in cultivating land or other 
business within said Colony 320 Acres at 50 S. Sterling pr hundred 
exclusive of the office fees & an Annual quit rent of 2.S like 
money pr hundred acres, to commence in the year 1780. For 
which we make an indefeasible Right in Fee Simple with General 
Warranty. This being the lowest price we can take, we conceive 
It can never be considered as exorbitant when in fact all who 
see the lands and their situation the fertility of the soil, the 
Luxuriance of the range the purity of the air and healthiness of 
the Climate with every promising prospect of a rapid population 
and of course in a very short time a flourishing Country must 
know the lands, even at this Time to be of Infinite more Value, 
Exclusive of the money advantages needless here to mention, 
the above being our Right, which well understood we hope will 
give satisfaction to all, Yet if any Doubt we wish them to satisfy 



232 Boonesborough 

themselves of a right so generally acknowledged and of which 
we entertain not the least Scruple before they pretend to become 
inhabitants of this Country as it is highly expedient that each 
and every Person inhabiting this new and at present weak Country 
should unanimously join in one general Cause for the safety and 
protection of the whole which I am Convinced Every Gentleman 
every honest man and every good citizen would desire to do, 
And when-ever any person comes in otherwise disposed they 
thereby raise disentions and Animosities by which they loose and 
Weaken the bands of Society and of course must render us an 
Easy prey to our Savage Enemies whenever they may see cause 
to take the advantage of our disunited situation to prevent which 
we not only wish to see every person in this Colony lending his 
aid but assure you Gentlemen that nothing within our power shall 
be wanting to Accomplish so Good an End. 

Jno Williams Agt for ye Com'y. 
A True Copy. 



JOHN WILLIAMS' REPORT (JANUARY 3, 1776) OF 
TRANSYLVANIA AFFAIRS TO THE PRO- 
PRIETORS IN NORTH CAROLINA. 

(American Archives, Volume IV.) 

Gentlemen: Boonesborough, January 3, 1776. 

In my last of the 27th inst., I promised in my next a more 
circumstancial account than I was capable then of giving, under 
the confused situation of mind I was then in, occasioned by the 
unhappy catastrophe of my brother's death, which happened 
before that. To comply in some measure with that promise. 



Appendix 233 

and to discharge a duty encumbered upon me, as well as the 
promptitude of mind that I feel to discharge that duty, I cheer- 
fully enter on the task and endeavor to render some account of 
what I have been after since my arrival at this place, now 
upwards of a month since ; and as a primative intention of send- 
ing me to Transylvania was to establish a land office, appoint 
the necessary officers to the said office, surveyors, etc.. Upon the 
best footing in my power, and to make the sale of the lands 
within the said Colony, upon such terms as might be most 
advantageous to the Proprietors and satisfactory to the inhabi- 
tants thereof; my first step was to fall on some method of 
appointing a person to the office of surveyor, who shall give 
general satisfaction to the people ; I thought none more likely 
to do so, than calling a Convention and taking their recom- 
mendation for the person who I would appoint. From the dis- 
persed situation of the people, and the extreme badness of the 
weather, we failed in convening a majority ; however, I took the 
sense of those who appeared, and who unanimously recommended 
Col. John Floyd, a gentleman generally esteemed, and I am per- 
suaded, truly worthy, and him I have commissioned surveyor of 
the Colony at present, though, perhaps, it may be advisable at a 
future day, to divide the Colony into two districts, and to appoint 
another surveyor to one of the Districts. The Entering Office 
I have disposed of to Mr. Nathaniel Henderson, and the Secre- 
taries to Mr. Richard Harrison ; though, upon consideration, I 
have thought that the numerous incidental expenses were so 
great that some way ought to be fallen upon to defray them 
without breaking in upon the moneys arrising from the sale of 
the lands, and that the two dollars for entering, etc., and the 
other two for filling up the deeds, counterparts, annexing seals 
and plots, etc., was more money than services of those offices 

31 



234 B ones borough 

absolutely required ; I, therefore, have reserved out of each office, 
one dollar, to answer the purpose of defraying those extraordinary 
expenses ; and the offices are left well worth the acceptance of 
persons capable of filling them with credit. The number of 
entries on our book is now upwards of nine hundred, a great 
part of which was made before I came to this place, when 
people could make entries without money and without price ; 
the country abounded with land-mongers ; since there is two dol- 
lars exacted on the entry made, people are not quite so keen, 
though I make no doubt but all who can comply with the terms 
will endeavor to save their lands ; and as many people who have 
got entry on the book are now out of the country, and can not 
possibly pay up the entry money immediately, I have thought 
proper to advertise that every person who has made entry on 
the book, and paid no money, that they come in and pay up the 
entrance money by the first of April, and take out their war- 
rants of survey, or their several entries will, after that time, be 
considered as vacated, and liable to be entered by any other 
person whatever. 

The surveyors have now begun to survey and some few people 
have been desirous of getting out their deeds immediately ; but 
they generally complain of a great scarcity of money, and doubt 
their being able to take their deeds before next June, or even 
before next fall ; though, in a general way, people seem to be 
well reconciled to the terms, and desirous to take up on them, 
except some few whom I have been obliged to tamper with, and 
a small party about Harodsburg, who, it seems, have been enter- 
ing into a confederacy not to hold lands on any other terms than 
those of the first year. As this party is composed of people in 
general, of small consequence, and I have taken some steps to 
remove some of their principal objections, I make no doubt but 



App e n dix 235 

to do all that way ; and for that purpose, have formed a design 
of removing myself, with the office to Harodsburg, some time 
in February next, unless I should find, from a trip I purpose 
immediately taking there, that I can not do it with safety. The 
principal man, I am told, at the head of this confederacy, is one 
Hite ; and him I make no doubt but to convince he is in error. 
Among other things, one of the great complaints was that the 
Proprietors, and a few gentlemen, had engrossed all the lands at 
and near the Falls of Ohio, which circumstance I found roused 
the attention of a number of people of note ; I, therefore, found 
myself under the necessity of putting a stop to all clamors of 
that kind, by declaring that I would grant no large bodies of 
land to any person whatever, which lay contiguous to the Falls ; 
which I have done in a solemn manner. This I am far from 
thinking will be injurious to the Proprietors, but quite the reverse ; 
and a circumstance which will render more general satisfaction, 
and be of as much utility to the Colony, as any step heretofore 
taken. You will observe that I am going on to justify the measure 
before I inform you what it is. But to be brief, it is this ; the 
Falls, it is certain, is a place which, from its situation, must be 
the most considerable mart in this part of the world ; the lands 
around are generally rich and fertile, and most agreeably sit- 
uated ; which had occasioned many people to fi.x their affections 
on that place. Many applications have been made for large 
grants at and about that place, and refused. Since which, twenty 
thousand acres, and upwards, have been entered there for the 
Company ; forty thousand or fifty thousand more, in large tracts, 
by a few other gentlemen ; a partially was complained of ; a 
general murmuring ensued. Upon considering the matter, I 
thought it unjust ; I thought it a disadvantage to the partners 
in general, and that some step ought to be taken to pacify the 



236 Bo ones borough 

minds of the people. I, therefore entered into a resolution that 
I would grant to no one man, living within a certain distance of 
the Falls, more than one thousand acres of land, and that to be 
settled and improved in a certain space of time, under the pen- 
alty of forfeiture ; that every person who had more entered than 
one thousand acres, might retain his one thousand out of which 
spot he pleased ; that the several officers, who have claims there, 
may each, on application and complying with our terms, be 
entitled to a one thousand within his survey. That a town be 
immediately laid out, and a lot reserved to each proprietor, and 
then the first settlers to take the lots which they may choose, 
enter and improve ; which improvement must be done in a cer- 
tain limited time, or the lot forfeited, and again to be sold, etc. 
These proposals seem to have given general satisfaction, and 
every one who had entered large quantities within these limits, 
gives it up with the greatest alacrity ; and I am in hopes will 
meet the general approbation of the company ; if so, I shall be 
happy ; if not, I shall be very sorry, though the necessity must 
justify the measure. 

The Falls of the Ohio is a place of all others within the 
Colony, will admit of a town, which, from its particular situa- 
tion, will immediately become popular and flourishing ; the land 
contiguous thereto rich and fertile, and where a great number of 
gentlemen will most certainly settle, and be the support and 
protection of a town at that place ; a place which should meet 
with every encouragement, to settle and strengthen in as much 
as it will, most certainly be the terror of our savage enemies, 
the Kickeboos Indians, who border more nearly on that place 
than any other part of the Colony ; and as I think it absolutely 
necessary that the afforesaid proposed town at the Falls, be 
laid off the ensuing spring, if I find it practicable, to raise a 



Appendix 237 

party about the first of March, and go down and lay out upon 
the future tranquility of our situation between this and then, for 
I assure you the little attack made upon us by the Indians the 
23rd of last month, has made many people, who are ashamed to 
confess themselves afraid, find out that their affairs on your side 
the mountains will not dispense with their staying here any 
longer at present ; and I am well convinced, once they get there, 
that every alarm, instead of precipitating, will procrastinate their 
return. When I mention the little attack made on the 23rd 
of last month, in this cursory manner, it is because I have 
heretofore sent you a particular account of that massacre, in 
a letter of the 27th ult. Though as that letter may fail, and 
not get to hand, I will now briefly endeavor to relate the 
circumstances. 

On Saturday about noon, being the 23rd, Col. Campbell, with 
a couple of lads, (Saunders and McQuinney) went across the 
river. On the opposite bank they parted. Campbell went up 
the river about two hundred yards and took up a bottom. The 
two lads, without a gun, went straight up the hill. About ten 
minutes after they parted a gun and a cry of distress was heard, 
and the alarm given that the Indians had shot Col. Campbell. 
We made to his assistance. He came running to the landing 
with one shoe off, and said he was fired on by a couple of 
Indians. A party of men was immediately dispatched under the 
command of Col. Boone, who went out, but could make no other 
discovery than two Moccasin tracks, whether Indians or not 
could not be determined. We had at that time over the river, 
hunting, etc., ten or a dozen, in different parties, part or all of 
whom we expected to be killed, if what Col. Campbell said was 
true ; but that by many was doubted. Night came on ; several 
of the hunters returned, but had neither seen nor heard of the 



238 Boonesborough 

Indians nor yet of the. two lads. We continued in this state of 
suspense until Wednesday, when a party of men sent out to 
make search for them found McQuinney killed and scalped in a 
corn field, at about three miles distance from town on the north 
side of the river. Saunders could not be found and has not 
yet been heard of. 

On Thursday a ranging party of fifteen men, under the com- 
mand of Jesse Benton, was dispatched to scour the woods, 
twenty or thirty miles round and see if any further discovery 
could be made. To those men we gave two shillings per day, 
and five pounds for every scalp they should produce. 

After they went out our hunters returned, one at a time, 
till they all came in safe, Saunders excepted, who no doubt had 
shared McQuinney's fate. 

On Sunday, the 31st day of the month, our rangers returned 
without doing any thing more than convincing themselves that 
the Indians had, immediately on doing the murder, ran off far 
northward, as they discovered their tracts thirty or forty miles 
towards the Ohio making that way. 

On the above massacre being committed we began to doubt 
there was a body of Indians about, who intended committing 
outrage on our inhabitants. However, we are perfectly satisfied 
since, that their number was only six or seven men, who set off 
from Shawanee town before the treaty at Fort Pitt, with an 
intent, as they termed it, to take a look at the white people 
on Kentucky ; and King Cornstalk at the treaty, informed the 
commissioners on this and said, for the conduct of these men, 
before they returned, he could not be responsible for that he 
did not know, but that they might do some mischief, and that 
if any of them should get killed by the whites he should take 
no notice at all of it. 



Appendix 239 

For this, we have undoubted authority, and do not at present 
think ourselves in any great danger here than if the above 
massacre had not been committed. 

Another circumstance is that our ammunition grows scant. 
I do not think there is enough to supply this place till the 
last of March ; supposing we should have no occasion of any 
to repulse an enemy. If we should, God only knows how long 
it will last. 

If any powder can possibly be procured it would certainly 
be advisable to do it ; if not, some person who can manufacture 
the materials we have on the way for the purpose of making 
powder. Most part of those are at the block house, or at least 
within two or three miles of there -the rest in Powell's Valley. 
Those (if we had any person who knew how properly to man- 
ufacture them into gun-powder) it would be necessary to have 
at this place. We have no such person, and of course they 
would be of but little service here. Nothwithstanding, I should 
have sent for them before now; but people here expect the 
most exorbitant wages for trivial services. Not less than a dollar 
a day, which will prevent my sending till I find the necessity 
greater, or men to be hired cheaper. 



24° Boo nesbo rough 



FORM OF HENDERSON & CO.'S SURVEY WARRANT, 

1776. 

(From an Original held by Robert Pogue, deceased, of 
Mason County, Kentucky.') 

Transylvania, ^ Richard Henderson & Co., 

\ ss. 
BoONESBOROUGH, \ Proprietors of the Colony of Transylvania, 



■1 SEAL t 



To John Floyd, Esquire, 

Surveyor of the said Colony. 



You are hereby authorized and required to survey and lay off 
for Wm. Pogue Six Hundred and forty acres of land lying on 
the west branches of Clark Creek known by the name of Gilmer's 
Lick abt. three miles west of Wm. Whitleys place where he lives 
and marked on a tree with powder, — W. Pogue. And the same 
having surveyed persuant to the rules of our office laid down and 
our instructions by the Surveyor to be observed ; two fair and 
correct plots of the same you make or cause to be made with 
your proceedings thereon, into our office within three months 
from the date hereof, wherever then held within our said Colony. 

Given under our Seal at Boonesborough the fifteenth day of 

January 1776. 

Jno. Williams, Ag't, &c. 

Endorsed — No 676 Wm. Pogues Warn't for 640 acres of land, 
Gilmer's lick. 

'Collins, page 516, Vol. II. • 



Appendix 241 

u 

PETITION OF TRANSYLVANIANS TO THE VIRGINIA 
CONVENTION. (RECEIVED MAY, 1776.) 

(From Journal Va. Convention.) 
To the Honorable the Convention of Virginia : 
The petition of the inhabitants, and some of the intended 
settlers of that part of North America, now denominated 
Transylvania, humbly sheweth : 

Whereas some of your petitioners became adventurers in that 
country from the advantageous reports of their friends who first 
explored it, and others since allured by the specious shew of the 
easy terms on which the land was to be purchased from those 
who stile themselves proprietors, have, at a great expense, and 
many hardships, settled there, under the faith of holding the 
lands by an indefeasible title, which those gentlemen assured 
them they were capable of making. But your petitioners have 
been greatly alarmed at the late conduct of those gentlemen, in 
advancing the price of the purchase money from twenty shillings 
to fifty shillings sterling, per hundred acres, and at the same 
time have increased the fees of entry and surveying to a most 
exorbitant rate ; and, by the short period prefixed for taking 
up the lands, even on those extravagant terms, they plainly 
evince their intentions of rising in their demands as the 
settlers increase, or their insatiable avarice shall dictate. And 
your petitioners have been more justly alarmed at such unac- 
countable and arbitrary proceedings, as they have lately learned 
from a copy of the deed made by the Six Nations with Sir 
William Johnson, and the commissioners from this Colony, at 
Fort Stanwix, in the year 1768, that the said lands were 

32 



242 Boonesboi''ough 

included in the cession or grant of all that tract which lies 
on the south side of the river Ohio, beginning at the mouth of 
Cherokee or Hogohege river, and extending up the said river 
to Kettaning. And, as in the preamble of the said deed, the 
said confederate Indians declare the Cherokee river to be 
their true boundary with the southard Indians, your petitioners 
may, with great reason, doubt the validity of the purchase that 
those proprietors have made of the Cherokees — the only title 
they set up to the lands for which they demand such extravagant 
sums from your petitioners, without any other assurance for hold- 
ing them than their own deed and warrantee ; a poor security, 
as your petitioners humbly apprehend, for the money that, among 
other new and unreasonable regulations, these proprietors insist 
should be paid down on the delivery of the deed. And, as we 
have the greatest reason to presume that his majesty, to whom 
the lands were deeded by the Six Nations, for a valuable consider- 
ation, will vindicate his title, and think himself at liberty to grant 
them to such persons, and on such terms as he pleases, your 
petitioners would, in consequence thereof, be turned out of pos- 
session, or obliged to purchase their lands and improvements on 
such terms as the new grantee or proprietor might think fit to 
impose ; so that we can not help regarding the demand of Mr. 
Henderson and his company as highly unjust and impolitic, in 
the infant state of the settlement, as well as greatly injurious to 
your petitioners, who would cheerfully have paid the consideration 
at first stipulated by the company, whenever their grant had been 
confirmed by the crown, or otherwise authenticated by the supreme 
legislature. 

And, as we are anxious to concur in every respect with our 
brethren of the united colonies, for our just rights and privileges, 
as far as our infant settlement and remote situation will admit of, 



App e n dix 



243 



we humbly expect and implore to be taken under the protection 
of the honorable Convention of the Colony of Virginia, of which 
we can not help thinking ourselves still a part, and request your 
kind interposition in our behalf, that we may not suffer under the 
rigorous demands and impositions of the gentlemen stiling them- 
selves proprietors, who, the better to effect their oppressive 
designs, have given them the color of a law, enacted by a score 
of men, artfully picked from the few adventurers Who went to 
see the country last summer, overawed by the presence of Mr. 
Henderson. 

And that you would take such measures as your honors in your 
wisdom shall judge most expedient for restoring peace and har- 
mony to our divided settlement ; or, if your honors apprehend 
that our cause comes more properly before the honorable the 
General Congress, that you would in your goodness recommend 
the same to your worthy delegates, to espouse it as the cause of 
the Colony. And your petitioners, &c. 



James Harrod, 
Abm. Hite, Jun. 
Patrick Dorane, 
Ralph Nailor, 
Robt. Atkinson, 
Robt. Nailor, 
John Maxfield, 
Saml. Pottinger, 
Barnerd Walter, 
Hugh M'Million, 
John Kilpatrick, 
Robt. Dook, 
Edward Brownfield, 



John Beesor, 
Conrod Woolter, 
John Moore, 
John Corbie, 
Abm. Vanmetre, 
Saml. Moore, 
Isaac Pritcherd, 
Joseph Gwyne, 
Geo. Uland, 
Michl. Thomas, 
Adam Smith, 
Saml. Thomas, 
Henry Thomas, 



Wm. Myars, 
Peter Paul, 
Henry Simons, 
Wm. Gaffata, 
James Hugh, 
Thos. Bathugh, 
John Connway, 
Wm. Crow, 
Wm. Feals, 
Benja. Davis, 
Beniah Dun, 
Adam Neelson, 
Wm. Shepard, 



244 



BoonesboroMgh 



Wm. House, 
Jno. Dun, 
Jno. Sim, Sen. 
John House, 
Sime. House, 
Chas. Creeraft, 
James Willie, 
John Camron, 
Thos. Kenady, 
Jesse Pigman, 
Simon Moore, 
John Moore, 
Thos. Moore, 
Herman Consoley, 
Silas Harland, 
Wm. Harrod, 
Levi Harrod, 



John Mills, 
Elijah Mills, 
Jehu Harland, 
Leonard Cooper, 
Wm. Rice, 
Arthur Ingram, 
Thos. Wilson, 
William Wood, 
Joseph Lyons, 
Andrew House, 
Wm. Hartly, 
Thomas Dean, 
Richard Owan, 
Barnet Neal, 
John Severn, 
James Hugh, 



James Calley, 
Joseph Parkison, 
Jediah Ashraft, 
John Hardin, 
Archd. Reves, 
Moses Thomas, 
J. Zebulon Collins, 
Thos. Parkinson, 
Wm. Muckleroy, 
Meridith Helm, Jun., 
Andw. House, 
David Brooks, 
John Helm, 
Benja. Parkison, 
Wm. Parkison, 
Wm. Crow. 



PETITION OF "THE COMMITTEE OF WEST FIN- 
CASTLE" TO THE CONVENTION OF VIRGINIA 
(HARRODSBURG, JUNE 20, 1776). 

(From Journal of Va. Convention.) 

To the Honourable the Convention of Virginia: 

The Humble petition of the Committee of West Fincastle 
of the Colony of Virginia, Being on the North and South Sides 
of the River Kentucke (or Louisa). Present, John Gabriel Jones, 
Esqr. , chairman, John Bowman, John Cowen, William Bennet, 



Appendix 245 

Joseph Bowman, John Crittenden, Isack Hite, George Rodgers 
Clark, Andrew McConnel, Hugh McGary, James Harrod, Silas 
Harland, William McConnel and John Maxwell, gentlemen. 
The Inhabitants of this remote part of Virginia who are equally 
desirous of contributing to the utmost of their power to the 
Support of the present laudable cause of American Freedom and 
willing to prove to the World, that tho they live so remote from 
the Seat of Government, that they Feel in the most Sensible 
manner for the Suffering Brethern, and that they most Ardently 
desire to be looked upon as part of the Colony notwith- 
standing the Base proceedings of a Detestible, Wicked and 
Corrupt Ministry to prevent any more County's to be laid off 
without the inhabitants would be so Pusilanimous as to give 
up the Right of appointing proper Persons to Represent 'em in 
Assembly or Convention, and as we further conceive that as 
the Proclamation of His Majesty for not settling on the Western 
Waters of this Colony is not founded upon Law, it can have 
no Force. And if we submit to that Proclamation as well as 
to have other Counties laid off without sending any represen- 
tatives to ye Convention, it's in our Opinion manifesting an 
Acquiesence to the Will of an Abandoned Ministry and leaving 
an Opening to their Wicked and Diabolical designs as then 
this Immense and Fertile Country would afford an Assylum to 
those whose Principles are inimical to American Freedom, And 
if Counties are not laid off as Fincastle County now Reaches 
and already Settled near Three Hundred and Eighty Miles 
from East to West it would be impossible that two Delegates 
can be Sufficient to Represent such a Respectable body of 
People, or that Such a number of Inhabitants should be 
Bound to Obey without being heard, and as those very People 
would most cheerfully Co operate in every measure tending 



246 Boonesborough 



to the Publick Peace and American Liberty if their Delegates 
now chosen by the Free voice of the Inhabitants on the 
Western Waters of Fincastle (on Kentucke) and which Election 
was held for Eight days at Harrods Town after the Prepara- 
tory Notice of Five Weeks given to the Inhabitants, and on 
the Pole being Closed, Captain John Gabriel Jones and Captain 
George Rodgers Clark having the Majority were returned, and 
not doubting the acceptance of 'em as our Representatives by 
the Honourable ye Convention, to serve in that Capacity, as 
we conceive the Precedent Established in West Augusta will 
Justify our Proceedings ; And we cannot but observe how impo- 
litical it would be to Suffer such a Respectable Body of Prime 
Rifle Men to remain in a state of Neutrality, when at this time 
a Certain Set of men from North Carolina stiling 'emselves 
Proprietors and claiming an Absolute Right to these very 
Lands taking upon 'emselves the Legislative Authority, Appoint- 
ing Ofhces both Civil and Military, having also opened a Land 
Office Surveyors General & Deputys appointed & act, convey- 
ances made, and Land sold at an Exhorbitant Price, with 
many other unconstitutional practices tending to disturb the 
Inhabitants, those who are well disposed to the whole some 
Government of Virginia, and creating factions and Divisions 
amongst them. * as we have not hitherto been Represented 
in Convention as well knowing ye Frailty of Human Nature 
that Interest will often Predominate, and that the Tyrannick 
Ministry would not stop at any means to reduce the loyal 
americans to their detestable ends that if these pretended 
Proprietors have leave to continue to act in their arbitrary 
manner out the controul of this Colony the end must be 
evident to every well wisher to American Liberty. At this 
time of Danger we cannot take too much Precaution against 



Appendix 247 

the Inroads of ye Savages and to prevent the Effusion of Inno- 
cent Blood. We the Committee (after receiving a messuage 
from the Chiefs of the Delaware's who are now settled near 
the Mouth of the Waubash) informing us that a League would 
be held at Opost, by the English and ye Kiccapoos Indians 
and that they would attend to know the purport of the same, 
if their Brothers of the Long Knife would send a man they 
could rely on, they would on their Return inform 'em of the 
same & they were Apprehensive the Kiccapoos would strike 
their Brothers ye Long Knife therefore we thought it most 
prudent and shall send immediately a Certain James Harrod 
and Garrett Pendergrass, to converse with 'em on ye same. 
And as it's the Request of the Inhabitants that we should 
point out a Number of Men Capable and most acquainted with 
the Laws of this Colony to act as Magistrates, a List of the 
same we have inclosed, and For other Matters Relative to 
this Country we Conceive that Captain Jones and Captain 
Clark our Delegates will be able to inform the Honourable the 
Convention, not doubting but they will listen to our Petition 
and take us under their Jurisdiction — And your Petitioners as 
in Duty Bound &c. 

Signed by order of the Committee. 

Jno. Ga Jones, Chairman, 
Abraham Hite, junr, Clerk. 

Harrodsburg, June 20, 1776. 



24^ BoonesboroMgh 

w 

PROCLAMATION OF TRANSYLVANIA COMPANY AGAINST 

SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTED LANDS 

(JUNE 26, 1776). 

(From Cal. Va. State Papers, Vol. i.) 
TRANSYLVANIA OR WEST KENTUCKY. 

Whereas disputes have arisen respecting the Title of the 
proprietors of Transylvania to the Soil of that Country and as 
some short time will elapse before they may be fully and 
satisfactorily determined (being anxious to avoid all cause of 
complaint) the said proprietors earnestly desire, that no person 
may in the mean time take possession of any entered or sur- 
veyed lands in said Country, with expectation of procuring a title 
in consequence thereof, as such lands ought, of right, to be 
granted to the respective persons in whose names those entries 
were made : and should the absolute title be adjudged in favour 
of the Subscribers on the present dispute, (as they have no 
doubt will be the case) they hereby declare their intention of 
granting such lands, on application to the proper claimants, 
according to the rules of their office. And the proprietors have 
hitherto reserved • the lands below Green river, and as high up 
Cumberland on both sides as Manskors' Lick, for themselves, 
until they could lay uff a small quantity therein for their 
separate use, they hope that no person will make improve- 
ment within the said bounds before such surveys shall be 
made, as such improvement may possibly interfere with choice 
of some of the copartners, and consequently, not be granted. 
And as it is unsafe at this time to settle the Country in small 
detached parties, and the alarming reports with respect to the 



Appendix 249 

hostile intention of the Cherokee Indians, on the frontiers, will 
no doubt prevent emigration for some time, to that Country, 
care will be taken to cause those lands to be laid off as soon 
as conveniently may be : so that when, from the more pacific 
disposition of those people, a removal to that Country may 
be thought safe, every person on Application to the books of 
the land office at Boonsborough, may be informed of the 
entered and reserved lands as aforesaid, and direct their choice 

accordingly. 

John Luttrell, Thomas Hart, 

James Hogg, Nathaniel Hart, 

David Hart, John Williams, 

Leonard H. Bullock, William Johnston. 

Richard Henderson, 



CAPTURE OF THE GIRLS AT BOONESBOROUGH. 
(Extract from a Letter of John Floyd to William Preston of Virginia.) 

My Dear Sir: Boonesborough, July 21, 1776. 

The situation of our country is much altered since I wrote 
you last. The Indians seem determined to break up our 
settlements ; and I really doubt, unless it is possible to give 
us some assistance, that the greater part of the people may 
fall a prey to them. They have, I am satisfied, killed several 
whom, at this time I know not how to mention. Many are 
missing who some time ago went out about their business of 
whom we can hear nothing. Fresh sign of Indians is seen 
almost every day. I think I mentioned to you before some 
damage they had done at Lee'stown. On the seventh of this 

33 



250 Boonesborough 

month they killed one _ Cooper on Licking Creek and on the 
fourteenth a man whose name I know not at your Salt Spring 
on the same creek. 

On the same day they took out of a canoe within sight 
of this place Miss Betsy Callaway, her sister Frances, and a 
daughter of Daniel Boone, the two last about thirteen or 
fourteen years old and the other grown. The affair happened 
late in the afternoon. They left the canoe on the opposite 
side of the river from us, which prevented our getting over 
for some time to pursue them. We could not that night fol- 
low more than five miles. Next morning by daylight we were 
on their track ; but they had entirely prevented our following 
them by walking some distance apart through the thickest 
cane they could find. We observed their course and on which 
side we had left their sign, and travelled upwards of thirty 
miles. We then supposed they would be less cautious in 
travelling, and making a turn in order to cross their track 
we had gone but a few miles when we found their tracks in 
a buffalo path — pursued and overtook them in going about ten 
miles, just as they were kindling a fire to cook. Our study 
had been how to get the prisoners without giving the Indians 
time to murder them after they discovered us. We saw each 
other nearly at the same time. Four of us fired and all 
rushed on them by which they were prevented from carrying 
anything away except one shot gun without any ammunition. 
Mr. Boone and myself had each a pretty fair shot as they 
began to move off. I am well convinced I shot one through 
the body. The one he shot dropped his gun — mine had none. 
The place was covered with thick cane, and being so much 
elated on recovering the three poor little heart-broken girls, 
we were prevented from making any further search. We sent 



Appendix 251 

the Indians off almost naked — some without their moccasins 

and none of them with so much as a knife or tomahawk. 

After the girls came to themselves sufficiently to speak they 

told us there were only five Indians — four Shawanese and one 

Cherokee. They could speak good English and said they would 

then go to the Shawanese towns. The war club we got was 

like those I have seen of that nation. Several words of 

their language, which the girls retained, were known to be 

Shawanese. * * * 

John Floyd. 



THE BOWMAN LETTER (TO COLONEL GEORGE 

ROGERS CLARK) ON THE LAST SIEGE 

OF BOONESBOROUGH. 

(From original, held by the late John B. Bowman.) 

Dear Sir Harrodsburgh, October 14, 1778. 

This day I received yours by Wm. Miers and with difficulty 
I shall furnish him with a horse to ride to the settlement on. 

The Indians have pushed us hard this summer. I shall only 
begin on the 7th of September when three hundred and thirty 
Indians with eight Frenchmen came to Boonesborough, raised a 
flag and called for Capt. Boone who had lately come from them 
and offered terms of peace to the Boonesborough people. Hear- 
ing that the Indians gladly treated with you at the Illinois gave 
them reason to think that the Indians were sincere ; two days 
being taken up in this manner till they became quite familiar 
with one another ; but finding the Boonesborough people would 
not turn out and having Col. Callaway, Maj. Smith, Capt. Boone, 



252 B oonesboroMgh 

Capt. Buchanan and their subalterns eight in number, in the 
Lick where they had their table, (you know the distance, about 
eighty yards) the Indians getting up, Blackfish made a long 
speech, then gave the word go, instantly a signal gun fired, the 
Indians fastened on the eight men to take them off, the white 
people began to dispute the matter though unarmed, and broke 
loose from the Indians, though there were two or three Indians 
to one white man. In running the above distance upwards of 
two hundred guns fired from each side and yet every man escaped 
but Squire Boone who was badly wounded though not mortally ; 
he got safe to the fort. On this a hot engagement ensued for 
nine days and nights, constant fire without any intermission, no 
more damage was done however but one killed and two wounded. 
The Indians then dispersed to the different forts where they 
still remain in great numbers and waylaying our hunters. Gen- 
eral Mcintosh who commands the army intended against Detroit 
I understand received instructions to strike the Indians and not 
meddle with Detroit. For other northern news I refer you to 
the Gazettes I herewith send you. 

The Indians have done more damage in the interior settle- 
ments this summer than was ever done in one season before. 
Absolute necessity obliges me to send Capt. Harrod for salt 
that we may be able to lay up a sufficient quantity of provision 
for the next summer. I hope you will send us one hundred 
bushels for that purpose, send an account of the same and I 
will send you the money by Capt. Montgomery in the Spring. 
Your compliance in this matter will enable us to keep our ground 
if not we shall be obliged to break up for want of provision for 
necessity will break through stone walls. I was obliged to 
promise six shillings per day to every man that returns with 
Capt. Harrod that I sent. I beg this as a favor to let every 



Appendix 253 

man of them have the value of forty dollars in goods as may 
best suit them and I will pay it with the above. 

I am, dear sir. your humble servant jj^^ Bowman. 

N. B. Pray forward the newspapers to my brother after 
your looking over them. 

P. S. We have been reinforced from Washington County 
with eighty men but their time was near out before they came 
this length so they return immediately again. 

Col. G. R. Clark. 



THE TRANSYLVANIA PURCHASE DECLARED VOID 
BY VIRGINIA IN 1778. 

(From Journal Virginia House of Delegates.) 

In the House of Delegates, Wednesday, the 4th of Novem- 
ber, 1778. 

Resolved, That all purchases of lands, made or to be made, of 
the Indians, within the chartered bounds of this commonwealth, 
as described by the constitution or form of government, by any 
private persons not authorized by public authority, are void. 

Resolved, That the purchase heretofore made by Richard 
Henderson and Company, of that tract of land called Transyl- 
vania, within this commonwealth, of the Cherokee Indians, is 
void ; but as the said Richard Henderson and Company have 
been at very great expense in making the said purchase, and in 
settling the said lands, by which this commonwealth is likely to 
receive great advantage, by increasing its inhabitants, and estab- 
lishing a barrier against the Indians, it is just and reasonable 
to allow the said Richard Henderson and Company a compen- 
sation for their trouble and e.xpense. 

Tuesday, November 17th, 1778 : Agreed to by the Senate. 



254 BoonesboroMgh 



AN ACT TO VEST CERTAIN LANDS ON THE OHIO AND 
GREEN RIVERS, IN FEE-SIMPLE, IN RICHARD HEN- 
DERSON AND COMPANY AND THEIR HEIRS. 

Passed at the Session of the General Assembly of Vir- 
ginia Begun at Williamsburg October 5, 1778, and in 
the Third Year of the Commonwealth. 

(From Henning's Statutes at Large, Vol. IX, p. 571.) 

W^hereas it has appeared to this Assembly that Richard 
Henderson and Company have been at very great expense in 
making a purchase of the Cherokee Indians and although the 
same has been declared void yet as this Commonwealth is likely 
to receive great advantage therefrom by increasing its inhab- 
itants and establishing a barrier against the Indians it is there- 
fore just and reasonable the said Richard Henderson and Com- 
pany be made a compensation for their trouble and expense. 

Be it enacted by the General Assembly that all that tract 
of land situate, lying and being on the waters of the Ohio and 
Green rivers bounded as follows, to wit : Beginning at the 
mouth of Green River, thence running up the same twelve and 
a half miles when reduced to a straight line, thence running at 
right angles with the said reduced lines twelve and a half miles 
on each side of the said river, thence running lines from the 
termination of the line extended on each side the said Green 
River at right angles with the same till the said lines inter- 
sect the Ohio, which said river Ohio shall be the western 
boundary of the said tract, be, and the same is hereby 
granted to the said Richard Henderson and Company and 
their heirs as tenants in common subject to the payment of 
the same taxes as other lands within this Commonwealth are 



Appendix 



255 



but under such limitations of time as to settling the said lands 
as shall be hereafter directed by the General Assembly but this 
grant shall and is hereby declared to be in full compensation to 
the said Richard Henderson and Company and their heirs for 
their charge and trouble and for all advantage accruing there- 
from to this Commonwealth and they are hereby excluded from 
any farther claim to lands on account of any settlement or 
improvements heretofore made by them or any of them on the 
lands so as aforesaid purchased from the Cherokee Indians. 



II 

CAPTAIN JOHN HOLDER'S COMPANY AT AND NEAR 

BOONESBOROUGH IN JUNE, 1779. 

(From the John B. Bowman papers.) 



Holder, John, Cap't. 
Ark, Uriel. 
Bailey, Thos. 
Ballard, Bland. 
Baughman, John. 
Bedinger, G. M. 
Berry, James. 
Bryan, James. 
Bunten, James. 
Butler, John. 
Callaway, John. 
Collins, Elijah. 
CoUins, Josiah. 
Collins, William. 
Constant, John. 
Cook, David. 
Coombs, William. 
Cradlebaugh, Wm. 
Dunpard, John. 



Estill, James. 
Fear, Edmund. 
Gass, David. 
Hancock, Stephen. 
Hancock, Wm. 
Hawiston, John. 
Hays, William. 
Hodges, Jesse. 
Horn, Jeremiah. 
Kirkham, Robert. 
Kirkham, Samuel. 
Lee, John. 
Lockhart, Charles. 
McCuUum, John. 
McGee, Wm. 
Morgan, Ralph. 
Morris, Wm. 
Perry, James. 
Pleck, John. 



Porter, Samuel. 
Proctor, Nicholas. 
Proctor, Reuben. 
Rollins, Pemberton. 
Ross, Hugh. 
Searcy, Bartlett. 
Searcy, Reuben. 
South, John, Sr. 
South, John, Jr. 
South, John, y'ng'r. 
South, Thomas. 
Stagner, Barney. 
Stearns, Jacob. 
Stephenson, John. 
Vallandigham, Benoni. 
Weber, John. 
Wilcoxson, Daniel. 
Wilson, Moses. 



256 Boonesborough 

III 

AN ACT FOR ESTABLISHING THE TOWN OF BOONS- 
BOROUGH IN THE COUNTY OF KENTUCKEY. 

Passed at the Session of the General Assembly of Virginia 
HELD AT Williamsburg, Commencing Oct. 4, 1779, 

AND IN THE FoURTH YeAR OF THE 

Commonwealth. 

(From Henning's Statutes at Large, Vol. X, p. 134.) 

Whereas it hath been represented to this present General 
Assembly that the inhabitants of the township called Boons- 
borough lying on Kentuckey river in the County of Kentuckey 
have laid off twenty acres of land into lots and streets and have 
petitioned this Assembly that the said lots and streets together 
with fifty acres of land adjoining thereto may be laid off into 
lots and streets and established a town for the reception of 
traders and that Six Hundred and forty acres of land allowed 
by law to every township for a common may also be laid off 
adjoining thereto. Be it therefore enacted, That the said fifty 
acres of land adjoining the said forty lots already laid off 
shall be and the same is hereby vested in Richard Callaway, 
Charles Mimms Thruston, Levin Powell, Edmund Taylor, James 
Estre, Edward Bradley, John Kennedy, David Gist, Pemberton 
Rollins, and Daniel Boone, gentlemen, trustees to be by them 
or any six of them laid out into lots of half an acre each 
with convenient streets which together with the lots and streets 
so laid off in the said township shall be and the same is 
hereby established a town by the name of Boonsborough. 

And be it further enacted. That so soon as the said fifty 
acres of land shall be so laid out into lots and streets the 
said trustees shall cause a plan thereof together with a plan 
of the said township as the same is already laid off to be 
returned to the court of the said County of Kentuckey there 
to be recorded, &c. &c. * * * 



Appendix 257 

IV 

MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS OF THE TRANSYLVANIA 
COMPANY, JANUARY 6, 1795. 

(American Archives.) 

To the Honorable the Congress of the United States : 

The Memorial of Thomas Hart, of the State of Kentucky, John 

Williams, Leonard Henley Bullock, and James Hogg, of the 

State of North Carolina, sheweth. 
That in the fall of the year 1774, your Memorialists, in 
company with Richard Henderson, William Johnston, Nathaniel 
Hart, John Luttrell, and David Hart, all now deceased, entered 
into bargain with the Overhill Cherokee Indians, for a purchase 
of some of their lands ; and agreeably to preliminaries then 
agreed to, they, in March 1775, met at Watauga with the chiefs 
of the said Indians, attended by upwards of twelve hundred of 
their people ; and then and there, in fair and open treaty, after 
several day's conference, and full discussion of every matter 
relating to the purchase, in presence of, and assisted by inter- 
preters chosen by the said chiefs, and in consideration of a very 
large assortment of clothes and other goods, then delivered by 
the said Company to the said chiefs, and by them divided among 
their people, they the said Company obtained from the said 
Indians two several deeds, signed by Okonistoto their king or 
chief warrior, Atakullakulla and Savonooko or Coronoh, the next 
in the nation to Okonistoto in rank and consideration, for them- 
selves, and on behalf, and with the warm approbation of the 
whole nation. These two grants comprehended, besides a great 
tract of land on the back of Virginia, a vast territory within the 
chartered limits of North Carolina, lying on the rivers of Hol- 

34 



258 Boonesborottgh 

ston, Clinch, Powell, and Cumberland, and their several branches, 
to the amount of many millions of acres. 

This purchase from the aborigines and immemorial possessors 
of the said lands, being concluded more than a year before the 
Declaration of Independence, before the very existence of the 
Americans as States, or their claim to such lands, and not con- 
trary to any then existing law of Great Britain or her Colonies, 
your memorialists and their copartners with confidence concluded 
that they had obtained a just, clear and indefeasible title to the 
said lands ; and being then by the said Indians put into the 
actual possession of the said country, they immediately hired 
between two and three hundred men, and proceeded across their 
territory, to the river Kentucky, which with all its branches was 
comprehended in their purchase ; and there about the 20th of 
April in the said year of 1775, began a settlement to which they 
gave the name of Boonsborough. The raising of necessary accom- 
modations for their infant Colony, and building forts for their 
defence against the Shawanese and other hostile Indians, on the 
northwest of the Ohio, added much to the prime cost of their 
lands, and was attended with imminent risk and danger, and 
even with the massacre of some of the proprietors and several 
of their friends and followers. 

After thus possessing and defending their property at a vast 
expense, trouble and danger, for several years against the sav- 
ages, the Company were much astonished to find that first the 
Assembly of Virginia, and some years afterwards, the Assembly 
of North Carolina, began to call in question the rights of the 
said Company. It would be to no purpose at this time, to 
trouble Congress with any thing relating to the negotiation of 
the said Company with the Assembly of Virginia, as the com- 
pensation in lands, made to them by that state, remains untouched 



Appendix 259 

and unclaimed by any person or persons whatever against the 
Company, as far as has come to their knowledge. But the dif- 
ferent fate of the lands granted them by the Assembly of North 
Carolina, makes some detail necessary. 

This Assembly, in their May session of 1782, enacted that a 
great part of the lands lying on the river Cumberland and branches 
thereof, all within the said Company's purchase, should be laid 
off and reserved for the officers and soldiers of the North Car- 
olina line, and soon thereafter, opened a land office for the sale 
of their whole purchase. However, after repeated remonstrances, 
presented to them by the Company, the Assembly, by way of 
compensation for their trouble and e.xpense, agreed that the Com- 
pany should retain 200,000 acres on the waters of Powell and 
Clinch rivers, part of the Company's purchase, with the grant or 
guarantee of the state for the same. The Company felt them- 
selves grossly aggrieved by being thus arbitrarily dealt with ; but 
they saw no alternative : they had not power to do themselves 
justice ; and there was then no tribunal to which they could 
appeal. One of the conditions of this grant or guarantee was, 
that it should be surveyed within a certain limited time. The 
Company, therefore, found it necessary to have the survey made 
within the time prescribed ; and though the Indians were then 
hostilely disposed, they ventured to depute one of their partners 
with a surveyor, chain carriers and guards ; but after incurring 
an expense of ;^300 and upwards, the survey and plot were 
found defective, owing to the hurry in which the business was 
done. This misfortune obliged the Company to apply to the 
Assembly for further time to have a new survey. Time was 
accordingly given, and agreeably thereto, at the expense of ^200 
more and upwards, the survey was completed, and soon there- 
after conferred by the Assembly. 



26o Boonesborough 

But while these things were doing, the General Assembly, in 
the year 1789, had ceded their western lands to the United States, 
and the United States in 1790, accepted this cession, on certain 
conditions, one of which was, that all entries made by, and grants 
made to, any persons within the limits ceded, should have the 
same force and effect as if the cession had not been made. 
Within this cession the whole of the Company's grant from the 
General Assembly was comprehended ; and though, in the opinion 
of the Company, it was a compensation very inadequate to their 
trouble and risk and expense, yet being now in possession of a 
State right as well as Indian right, they flattered themselves 
their title to it was beyond a cavil. They concluded it to be of 
considerable value ; and as the Holston settlements were rapidly 
advancing around it, they were pursuaded they could venture to 
form settlements on it, or at least dispose of it to advantage. 
They therefore had a bill of partition filed in the district court 
of Washington ; and being now in view of a speedy partition 
and of receiving some small compensation for their great expendi- 
tures and trouble, they could not help being greatly astonished 
and extremely mortified, when they learnt that almost the whole 
of their grant from the Assembly was ceded to the Cherokee 
Indians by the United States at the treaty of Holston, made on 
the day of 179 

Such a seizure and disposal of the property of citizens without 
any previous stipulation with the proprietors, nay without the 
least notice given them or any crime alleged against them, 
appeared to your Memorialists not only improper but unjust ; 
but for the honor of the States, your Memorialists hope, that at 
the time this cession was made to the Indians, the government 
was not aware that such private property was comprehended in 
it. At any rate, if for political reasons, and for the interest of 



Appendix 261 

the States, it was found expedient to make such a sacrifice of 
the rights of a private company, it is to be hoped that Congress 
will be disposed to mal^e ample compensation. 

Twenty years have nearly elapsed since the Company made 
their purchase from the Indians. The expenses of this purchase 
from first to last have been great, and have been the means of 
reducing some of the Company to great difficulties ; for, owing 
to the facts and circumstances above set forth, they have not to 
this day, been able to receive the smallest recompense. 

The injustice and oppression complained of are flagrant, and 
the facts and circumstances above set forth are notorious, at 
least they are well known to the Senators and Representatives 
in Congress from the state of North Carolina, and the deeds and 
other vouchers are ready to be produced. And that all difficulty 
and dispute may hereafter be done away, your memorialists are 
willing, upon receiving proper compensation, to relinquish all 
claim to the lands purchased by them from the Indians within 
the chartered limits of North Carolina, an extensive territory now 
held by the United States in which the Indian claim was extin- 
guished by fair purchase, at the expense of your Memorialists. 
Your Memorialists therefore, without further detail, beg leave to 
submit their case to the wisdom and justice of the Congress of 
the United States, and from them hope for speedy and ample 
redress. 

Your Memorialists have only further to request, that whatever 
compensation Congress may be pleased to give them, may be 
directed to be dealt out to your Memorialists and Company, 
and their representatives or assigns, respectively, in proportion 
to the share to which each is entitled by the copartnership. 

Signed for and in behalf of the Company, by 

Jno. Williams, Chairman. 
6th January, 1795. 



INDEX 



PAGE 



Abingdon 3^ 

Adams, Charles Francis .a 

Adams, John 43, 229 

Adventurers 58, 166 

Aikin, Samuel 1 30 

AUeghanies ,q 

Alves, James 151, 196 

Ambuscades 16 88 

American Pioneer go 

Anderson, Nicholas 108 

Anthony, James 108 

Appendix i,q 

Ark, Uriel 255 

Arrows Blazing q5 

Artillery, Dread of 82, 119 

Ash Hopper ^ i 

Athens, Kentucky 121, 131 

Attacullaculla 8, 151, 161 

Attempt to Burn Fort 59, 96, loi 

Bacon, J . P 156 

Bailey, Thomas 255 

Ballard, Bland 116, 255 

Baubin, Charles 65, 86 

Baughman, John (Boffman) 121, 255 

Bear Meat 163, 166, 176 

Bedinger, G. M 255 

Bennet, William 244 

Benton, Jesse 45, 238 

Berry, James 255 

Bible Class 40 

Big Hill, Kentucky 10 

Big Sandy c 

Big Turtle (Boone) 65 



264 



Index 



Bird, Henry , io8, 1 19 

Black Bird 72, 86 

" Black Dan " 32, 36 

Black Fish 56, 65, 66, 68, 72, 80, 81, 84, 87, 88, 103, 108, 109 

Blackfish Ford 76 

Black's Fort 37 

Black Hoof 74 

Bledsoe, Captain 170 

Block Houses 35, 79, 88, 107 

" Block House, The " 36, 37 

Blue Grass 18 

Blue Licks, Battle of 129 

Blue Licks, Lower 64 

Blue Licks, Upper 51, 75, 82 

Blue Ridge, The 2, 4 

Boffman's Creek 121 

Boiling Spring 28 



Boone, Danie 
Boone, Danie 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Daniel 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie 
Boone, Danie 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie! 
Boone, Danie 



and Cherokees 2,3 

and the Henderson Scheme 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, g 

and Wilderness Road 6, g, 10, 16, 17, 165 

Appointed Lieutenant Colonel 122 

at Battle of Blue Licks 129 

at Watauga 2, 7, 9 

Autograph 8g, 1 1 1 

Before 1775 145 

Brings His Family to Boonesborough 37, 40, 178 

Captured at Blue Licks 65,68 

Characteristics of 167 

Coolness 12, 21 

Early Life, 9 

Escapes Capture at Boone's Station 131 

Escapes from the Indians 6g 

Exonerated 105 

Family at Snoddy's 38 

First Attempt to Colonize Kentucky 2, 146 

Helps to Rescue the Girls 50 

in Command at Boonesborough 56, 98 

in ' ' The Great Siege " 87 



Index 265 



Boone, Daniel, Leaves Kentucky j , j 

Boone, Daniel, Letter of April i, 1775 jg3 

Boone, Daniel, Letter to Governor of Virginia 120 

Boone, Daniel, Name j 

Boone, Daniel, Order to the Lower Companies 12 

Boone, Daniel, Portrait of jp 

Boone, Daniel, Returns with Family from North Carolina 120 

Boone, Daniel, Relics of gg 

Boone, Daniel, Robbed j2o 

Boone, Daniel, Settles Boone's Station j 20 

Boone, Edward, Killed 

Boone, Israel 

Boone, James, Killed g 

Boone, Jemima, 40, 41, 49, 67, 77 

Boone, Jemima, Captured 

Boone, Mrs ._ ^, --_ 

40, 4i> 67 

Boone, Mrs., Returns to North Carolina g^ 

Boone, Squire 9, 52, 67, 77, 87, 90, 107 

Boone's Creek 

Boone's Gap 

Boone's Narrative 34, 49, 57, 72 

Boone's Path Post-office 

Boone's Station ,21, 128, 129 

Boone's Trace ^g_ ^^^ 

Boonesborough a Deserted Village j ,_ 

Boonesborough an Open Town 

Boonesborough, Burials at . g^ j. _ 

Boonesborough Ferry ^ 

Boonesborough, Floods at , , , , , , 

Boonesborough Fort, Aid Asked _ j 

Boonesborough Fort, Appearance of it in 1778 8q 

Boonesborough Fort Battery 

Boonesborough Fort Besieged ,„ _, 

Boonesborough Fort, Boys in 77, 129 

Boonesborough Fort, Books at g, 

Boonesborough Fort, Cabin Equipments 52 

Boonesborough Fort Commenced „, 

^5 

Boonesborough Fort Completed , , -2 6q 

35 



266 Index 



Boonesborough Fort, Conveniences of 62 

Boonesborough Fort, Food at 63 

Boonesborough Fort, Friendly Savages at 82,83 

Boonesborough Fort, Garrison of 57, 58, 77 

Boonesborough Fort Incomplete 26 

Boonesborough Fort Mine 92,99 

Boonesborough Fort, No Remnant of Exists 1 34 

Boonesborough Fort, No Well in 36,69 

Boonesborough Fort, Patriots Rejoice 53, 61, 132 

Boonesborough Fort, Plan of 26, 35, 79 

Boonesborough Fort, Siege Abandoned 100 

Boonesborough Fort, Site of 24, 40, 135, 172 

Boonesborough Fort, Sufferings at 60, 6i, 67, 78, 122, 125 

Boonesborough Fort, Surrender Demanded 81 

Boonesborough Fort, the Truce 81 

Boonesborough Fort, Women of 77, 129 

Boonesborough Incorporated no, 256 '^ 

Boonesborough in 1792 133 

Boonesborough, Land Disposed of by Lot 172 

Boonesborough, Location Described 137 

Boonesborough, Memorials Proposed 138 

Boonesborough Named 28, 165 

Boonesborough, Plat of no 

Boonesborough Settled 20 

Boonesborough, Site in 1900 25, 135, 136 

Boonesborough, Trustees of : 1 1 

Boonesborough, Town Becomes Extinct 134 

Boston, Battle at 178 

Bowman, Captain 177 

Bowman, John 60, 76, 85, 108, 118, 244 

Bowman, John, Letter to Clark 76, 251 

Bowman, John, Warning Letter to 118 

Bowman, Joseph 230, 245 

Bowman, Major 177 

Braddock's Defeat 74 

Bradford, John 5, 72 

Bradley, Edward in 

Brant, Joseph 124 



Index 267 

Bread, Lack of 

o -J T 32,177,192 

Bridges, James 

British Commissary 

British Flag ••• ^ ^ ^ " i !!''!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 88 

Brooks, Castleton 

Brooms, Hickory 

Brooks, Thomas 

Brush, Dead '.'..'.!!.!!. y'^\(> 

Bryan, James 

Bryan's or Bryant's Station .' ^^^ ' \^^^ '^^V,' L" 

Buchanan, William „ 

_ 07,127 

Buffaloes /' 

Off, ,, , i7> 19. 22, 166, 175 

Buffalo Meat 

r, u ^ T 22,192 

Jiuttalo Tongues 

Buffalo Trace , 

10, 16 

Bulger, Edward 

Bullet, Captain 

„ ,, ^ 180 

Bullock, Leonard H 

Bunker Hill ^ 

33 

Bunten, James 

•" 255 

Burton, CM 

103 

Bush, William 

Butler, John 

•" 255 

Butler, Mann o <= 

108, 169 

Butler, Simon ^aa^- 

^ ^. ' , 56,67,72,103 

Cabin Creek 

75 

Cabins in the Hollow 

„ , ,. 20, 33, 40 

Cahokia „^ 

00 

Calk, William 

15 

Callaway, Elizabeth 

' 49i 52 

Callaway, Fanny 

Callaway, Flanders ^^^ g g 

Callaway, John 

Callaway, Richard. .9, 36, 38, 41, 49, 50, 67, 77, 81, 87, 98, 105, iii, 165 

Callaway, Richard, Death of j ^ g 

Caldwell, William 

127 

Canadian Archives 

73.133 

Campbell, Arthur 71, 160 



268 Index 



Campbell, Colonel ." 237 

Cane 16, 1 63 

Canebrakes 17 

Cane Creek, North Carolina 39 

Cannon, the Wooden 95 

Canoe Ridge 116 

Capture of the Three Girls 49, 249 

Caroline County, Virginia 9 

Carr, John 72 

Carter County, Tennessee i , 7 

Carter, T. W 38 

Carter's Books 159 

Carter's Valley 159 

Cartwright, John 108 

Cartwright, Robert 108 

Castlewood, Virginia 38 

Catabecassa 74 

Chaplain, Abraham 118 

Chenault, William 16, 87, 127 

Chenoca i43t 152 

Cherokee River 243 

Cherokees 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 29, 50, 161, 190, 242 

Cherokees, Deed to Henderson and Company 29, 151, 149 

Cherokee Towns 2 

Chillicothe 68, 71 

Chota 2 

Christmas at Boonesborough 46, 125 

Clark County i ig, 137 

Clark Creek 240 

Clark, George Rogers... 47, 48, 57, 67, 71, 76, 86, 107, 118, 121, 130, 245 

Clark, Hills of 50 

Clear Creek 107 

Climax of the Treaty 89 

Clinch Mountain 159 

Clinch River 38, 163 

Clover, White 18, 28, 31, 176 

Coburn, Samuel 161 

Cocke, William 13, 15, 16, 20, 21, 37, 185 



A 



Index 269 

Collins, Elijah 

•' 255 

Collins, Josiah 

■' 255 

Collins, William 

255 

Collomes, Captain 

^ 175 

Combahee Ferry, South Carolina ^ 

Commissioner, the Prostrate 

Commissioners, Attempt to Seize g 

Commissioners, Peace o 

Conelly, Major „ 

Conference in the Hollow „ 

Connecticut, Transylvania Land Fever in -2 

Constant, John 

'■' 255 

Continental Congress and Transylvania .2 

Cook, David 

' ••■255 

Coombs, William 

c°°p«'" .!..'.'. 250 

Corn, Indian 23, 71, 74, 107, iii, 113, 115, 126, 130, 179 

Corn-makers' Company 

Cornstalk, Chief 



Cornwallis' Surrender . . . 

Coronoh 

Counter Mine, The 

Court Martial, the Boone 

Cowen, John 

Cowpens, Battle of 

Cradlebaugh, WiUiam . . . 

Crittenden, John 

Croghan, George 

Cross Plains 

Crow, William 

Cumberland Gap 

Cumberland Mountain. . . 

Cumberland River 

Curious Warfare , 

Currency, Continental ... 

Cuttawa , 

Cuttoe- Knife 

Dandridge, Alex. S 



23, 107 

46, 238 

125 

151 

94 

105 

244 

123 

255 

245 

143 

121 

243 

10, 14 

163 

15, 114, 163, 157 

97 

115 

144 

16, 186 

197 



2 70 Inde 



X 



Dark and Bloody Ground . . ." 144 

Darlington 144 

Deane, Silas, Letter of 42, 219, 229 

De Chaine, Isadore 73, 85 

Declaration of Independence at Boonesborough 53 

Deed, Cherokee, to Henderson and Company 151, 230 

Deer 2, ig, 166, 176 

Deposition of Charles Robertson 157 

De Quindre, Dagneaux 72, 80, 85, 87, 88, 102, 104 

De Quindre, Death of 103 

De Quindre, Autograph of 103 

Detroit 61, 68, 72, 74, 78, 86, 88, 91, 103 

Devil's Race Path 146 

Dick's River 172, 174 

Dissension at Boonesborough g8 

Dixon, Tilman 156 

Donelly's Fort 68 

Donelson, Colonel 158, 181 

Doniphan, A. W log 

Doniphan, Joseph 109 

Dorchester, Lord 43, 133 

Douglas, James ig6 

Douiller, Peter 72, loi, 104 

Dragging Canoe 8, 144, 159 

Drake, Joe 174 

Draper, Lyman C 4i 9, 72, 76, 105, 170 

Drewyer. See Douiller. 

Drinking Tube, Revolutionary 135 

Drouth of 1782 126 

Dug-out, The no, 115 

Dunmore, Lord 13, 29, 32, 44, 181, 229 

Dunning, James 170 

Dunpard, John 255 

Du Quesne (see De Chaine) 72,73 

Duree, Mrs 125 

Durrett, R. T 10, 66 

Durrett, R. T. , Preface by iii 

Election at Harrodsburg 47 



hid ex 271 



Election of Transylvania Delegates 28 

Elizabethtown, Tennessee ■, n 

^"^ 19, 176 

Ellis' Station o 

Ellis, William Vj^'^' ' [['^[ ^^^ 

Elm, the Divine 19, 28, 88, ,35, 176 

Elm, the Divine, Cut Down j , , 

Escheat, the Jury of j2o 

Estill, James 255 

Estill's Defeat ,,, 

120 

Estre, James ^ ^ ^ 

Exeter Township 

l^''' °^ o^'° ■■■.■.■.■,■.■.■.■.■.■.■.;■;. 67; Vas-'^ae 

Fannmg, David 

P^"^^' J°hn 2g^ j'jj' 2^8 

Fayette County, Kentucky, Created 122 

Fayetteville, North Carolina 2 

Fear, Edmund 

Feast in the Hollow go 

Ferryboat Built 116, 134 

Ferry First Established in Kentucky no, n6, 125, 134, 137 

''"^°°' ^'^^ 6, 18. 19, 34,' 131,' 144 

Findlay 

First White Woman on Kentucky River -o 

Flag, British og 

Flag of Truce 78, 80, 81 

Flag of United States 26 

Flax , 

96 

Fleet of Perogues .,, 

F"'^* Locks 83, 132, 136 

^'^ts „2,:9i 

^'"y''- J°^° 34, 44, 51, 53, 130, 233 

Floyd, John, on Capture of the Girls 249 

Floyd's Defeat ^^ 

Ford, Town of 

Forest Food g 

Fort and Cabins Confused 

^ 34 

Fort, Attempts to Burn the 5996 



272 Index 



Fort Boone ' 20, 33, 172 

Fort Chartres 228 

Fort Pitt Conference 46 

Fort Stan wix 241 

Four Sycamores, The 49 

Fowey, The 32 

Foxtown, Kentucky 127 

Frankfort Commonwealth 1 1 

French Alliance 71. 86 

French and Indian War Bounty 112 

French Canadians 71. 72, 85, 103, 118, 127 

French Lick 114, 115 

Game 23, 32, 38, 41, 60, 67, 164, 176 

Garden, the Fort 32 

Garrison of Boonesborough 23, 77, 87 

Gass, David 255 

George, Whitson 108 

Germain, George 78 

Gess, David 5^ 

Gess, John 51 

Gilmer's Lick 240 

Girty, Simon 1 27 

Gist, Christopher 18, 144 

Gist, David 1 1 1 

Goodman, Daniel, Killed 57 

Grampus, Slave 1 80 

Grant, John 107, 1 18 

Grant's Station 118 

Granville County, North Carohna 4. 42. 115. 212 

Granville, John, Earl of 149 

Granville, Town of i34 

Great Grant, the 8, 151, 257 

Great Siege, Last Night of 1 00 

Great Siege of Boonesborough 76 

Greenbrier River 69 

Green River 55- lo^i 'H 

Guess, Thomas 178 

Gun Flints 112 



Inde 



X 273 



Gunpowder 23, 112, 113, 149, 239 

Gunpowder made at Boonesborough 61 

Hackberry Ridge 27, 76 

Haldimand, Frederick 65 ^2 

Haldimand MSS 74 76 

Hall, Edward 108 

Halley, H. S 135 

Hall, James 26, 168, 183 

Hall, William ,08 

Hamilton's Kindness to Boone 68 

Hamilton, William 61, 69, 71, 72, 73, 78, 80, 85, 86 

Hammond, Nathan joy 

Hancock, Stephen 87, 255 

Hancock, William 87, 255 

Hard Winter, The 122 

Harland, Silas ^xs 

Harmon, Valentine iq5 

Harper, John joS 

Harper, Peter iq8 

Harrison, Richard 4 ,_ 233 

Harrod, James 167, 175, igo, 243, 245 

Harrodsburg 12, 28, 40, 47, 49, 107, 178, 235 

HaiTodsburg Election in 1776 246 

Harrodsburg Remonstrance 45^ 47 

Harrod's Station ^o, 167, 175 

Hart, David 4, 51 

Hart, John 161 

Hart, Nathaniel 4, 7, 13, 36, 51, io8, 171, 173, 188 

Hart, Nathaniel, Death of 127 

Hart, N., Junior 1 1 

Hart, Thomas 4, 38, 120 

Harvey's History ■,. 

Hat- Waving Signal 89 

Hawiston, John 255 

Hay, Peter 218 

Hays, William 255 

Haywood's History 1 1 ^^ 

Hazel Patch ^q 

36 



274 Index 



Henderson Company Denoutlced 182 

Henderson Company, Great Work of 55 

Henderson Company, Land Grant to. . 55, 114, 115, 151, 194, 230, 242, 254 

Henderson Company, Letter to Patrick Henry 194 

Henderson Company, Meeting 42 

Henderson Company, Members of 151, 166 

Henderson Company, Memorial to Congress 237 

Henderson Company, Second Colony of 114 

Henderson Company, The 3, 4, 5, 7> 54 

Henderson Company, Virginia Against 48, 54, 106 

Henderson, Kentucky 55> ii5) 196 

Henderson, Nathaniel 44, 233 

Henderson, Pleasant i6g 

Henderson, Richard, at Boonesborough 22, 26, 33, 36 

Henderson, Richard, at Williamsburg 47-54 

Henderson, Richard, Autograph 35 

Henderson, Richard, Death of 115 

Henderson, Richard, Early Life of 3, 4, 5 

Henderson, Richard, Grave of 115 

Henderson, Richard, Journal 169, 180 

Henderson, Richard, Leaves for North Carolina 39 

Henderson, Richard, Letter of, April 8, 1775 183 

Henderson, Richard, Letter of, June 12, 1775 184 

Henderson, Richard, Master Spirit 55 

Henderson, Richard, Plan Fails 54 

Henderson, Richard, Residence in North Carolina 115 

Henderson, Richard, Speech to House of Delegates 197 

Henderson, Richard, Trip to Kentucky 12 

Henderson, Richard, Trip through Kentucky in 1780 . 1 14 

Henderson, Samuel 3i S^i 52 

Henderson's Land Scheme 3i 4. 5> 7 

Hendricks 118 

Henning's Statutes no 

Henry, Patrick 27, 72 

Herod, James (Harrod) 167 

Hewes 224 

Hicks, William 161 

Hinkston's Station 52 



Index 275 



Hite, Abram 230, 243 

Hite, Isaac 57, 235, 245 

Hodges, Jesse 25s 

Hogg, James 4- 42. 43. 55, 196 

Hogg's Report of His Embassy 43^ 224 

Hogohege River 242 

Holder, John 5,_ 108, 116 

Holder, John, Company, Roll of 108,' 127 

Holder's Defeat 128 

Holston Company, The 80, 104 

Holston River, The 5^ 15, 

Holston Salt Wells 38 

Holston Settlements 6^^ ^i 123 

Holston Valley 2 

Hooper 224 

Hope Deferred at Boonesborough 82, 99, 104 

Horn, Jeremiah 25s 

Houghton, Thomas 1=5 

House of Delegates, Answer to Speech of Proprietors 202 

House of Delegates, Journal of igg 

House of Delegates, Members of iqg 

House of Delegates, Transylvania 28, 30 

Hoy's Station 127, 128 

Hunting Grounds i^g^ 158 

Huts 20, 22 

Hyder, N. E 7 

IHinois 85 

Imlay 18 

Immigrants 36, 40, 44, 46, 107, no, in, 121, 124, 126 

Independence for Kentucky ^8 

Indian Alliance 45 

Indian Chiefs of the Delawares 247 

Indian Forces 57, 58, 65, 72 

Indian Hand-shake, The 89 

Indian Hostilities Threatened 49,118 

Indian Language 69, 90 

Indian Losses 51, 57, 58, 59, loi 

Indian Love for Boone 77^ 85 



^1^ Index 



Indian Outrages. ii, 21, 37, 45, 49, 51, 56, 104, 117, irg, 125, 130, 237, 249 

Indian Paint 75 

Indians Attack the Road Builders 11 

Indian Scalped 37 

Indians, Friendly 47, 82, 83 

Indians Hide their Dead 58, 59 

Indians, History of 74 

Indians, Hurons 124 

Indians, Illegal Purchases From 48 

Indians in Winter of 1777 56 

Indians Kickapoos 236, 247 

Indians, Miamis 124, 130 

Indians, Neutral 45 

Indians, Overhills 2, 3 

Indians Side with British 51 

Interpreters with Indians and British 87 

Invasion Threatened, Letter to Bowman 118 

Jackson, Joseph 66, 1 17 

Jefferson County, Kentucky, Formed 122 

Jefferson, Thomas 27, 43, 195, 226 

Jerked Meat 16, 186 

Jobe, E. D 7 

Johnson's Indian Tribes 144 

Johnson, Thomas i6i 

Johnson, William 108 

Johnstone, William 4, 218 

Jones, John Gabriel 47, 244 

Jouett, Matthew 178, 197 

Judge's Friend 1 58 

Kanawha 72 

Kaskaskia 67 

Kelley, John loi 

Kenneday, John iii 

Kenton, Simon 67 

Kenton, Simon, at Boonesborough 56 

Kenton, Simon, Captured 104 

Kenton, Simon, Kills Three Indians 57 

Kenton, Simon, Saves Life of Boone 57 



Index 277 

^^^T"? rr ■ ''3.5-8 

Kentucky Climate in Pioneer Times jg 

Kentucky County Created g 

Kentucky District Formed 

Kentucky, Extinct Towns of 

Kentucky, Fertility of r 

-^ -^ 104, I go 

Kentucky Forts at Mercy of Artillery j i 

Kentucky Historical Society 

Kentucky River 5, 6, 8, 9, 10. ,6, 17, 20, 40, 92, 115, 122, :24.'i28 

Kentucky River Floods 

Kentucky, The Name 76, 104, 124, 132, 143. i57. 169. 171,246 

Kentucky, The Name, Account of 

^43 

Kewee, South Carolina 

Killed at Boonesborough 57- 59, 94! 101',' ^27 

King's Mountain 

Kirkham, Robert .... 

255 

Kirkham, Samuel 

255 

LaMothe, De Jaine oc 

•' 86 

Land Court at Boonesborough 

Land Entries ... 

234 

Land Fever High 

" 112 

Land Grants 

114, 149, 235, 241 

Land, Kentucky Price of ^^_ ^^_ ,^j_ ^^^ 

Land Law Enacted 

112 

Land Office at Boonesborough g 

Land of British Subjects Confiscated .' 

Last Battle of the Revolution 

Leavy, William 

ri-ee, John 

XLee, Richard Henrv r 

' 43. 226, 229 

Leestown 

249 

Leowvisay (Louisa) , 

Letter to Patrick Henry from Henderson Company 27 

Lewisburg , 

09 

Lexington, Battle of „ 

Lexington. Kentucky 3 j_ ^^^^ '108,' ^20,' 127 

Lick ,Q 

10, 19, 90, 166, 172 

Licking Creek 

250 



233 
120 
129 
108 



278 Index 



Lick Spring, The 19, 59, 83, 87, 90, 135 

Linn 180 

Lincoln County, Kentucky, Created 122 

Little Carpenter 162 

Livery of Seisin 29, 207, 230 

Live Stock 13, 59, 83, 100, 179, 206 

Lockhart, Charles 255 

Logan, Benjamin 105 

Long Island, Tennessee 6, 9, 37, 163, 226 

Long Knife 47, 49, 247 

Long Run 124 

Lorimer 65 

Lossing, Benson J 66 

Lost Men, The 177 

Loughry's Defeat 129 

Louisa, the Name 5, 169, 152, 172 

Lulbegrud Creek 74 

Lumkin, George 156 

Luna 172 

Luttrell, John 4, 7, 13, 37, 39, 55, 115 

Lythe, John 30, 31, 178, ig6 

Maddern, George 108 

Madison County, Kentucky 11, 87, 137 

Magazine, The Boonesborough 174 

Maginty, Alex 143 

Mansker's Lick 248 

Marshall, Humphrey, History 5, 120 

Martin, John 51 

Martin, Joseph 14, 155 

Martin, Josiah 5,29,31,43,150 

Martin's Cabin 14.38 

Martin's Station 107, 119, 170, 183 

Maxwell, John 245 

Maysville, Kentucky 75 

McAfee, James 172 

McAfee, Robert 22, 173 

McAfee, Samuel 22, 173 

McAfee's Station 109, 124 



Index 



279 



McAfee, William 

McClelland's Fort Abandoned ^^° 

McConnell, Andrew _ _^ ^ ^ ^6 

McConnell, William ^'*^ 

McCullum, John ^"*5 

McDowell, Thomas ^^^ 

McGary, Hugh ^'''^^^'''y. ' i- 169 

McGee, William 4°, 245 

Mcintosh, General ^^^ 

McKee, Alexander ^^2 

McMillan, John '^■' 

McPheeters, Joseph ^ ' 

McQuinney '/ " "' '^9 

Me-dow Land, The '*^' '^^' ^^^ 

Meat, Wild ^'^^' '"^^ 

Memorials for Boonesborough d9. 64. 74 

Memorial to Congress of Transylvania Company. ' ' ' '\\ ' '^^ 

Miers. William 55.215.257 

Mile Trees ^5' 

Militia '' '"' 17 

,,. _, „ 47. 50, 60, 64, 77, 84, 86, QQ, 1 18 

Mme, The, at Boonesborough -yy, no 

Miseries of the Siege 93. 97 

Moluntha, Chief ^^' ^^ 

Monk, Negro Powder-maker . . 74. 80, 81 

Monongahala "' ^ 

Montgomery, Alexander '^^ 

Montgomery, Captain '_ 72, 103 

Montgomery, John ^^~ 

Moore, Captain ^° 

Moore, William ^''^ 

Morehead's Address ''''' 

Morgan, Ralph ' ^° 

Morris, William "55 

Mound-Builders ^^5 

Munseka, Chief ^45 

Negroes Captured by Indians ^^ 

Negro Slaves, Price of ^'^' ''^ 

Negro Slaves with Settlers 10 i? 2^ s, Ta " ^" ' V " ^'^ 

^°' '3. 22, 87, 116, 164, 165, 192 



2 8o Inde 



X 



Negro with Indians 74, 102 

Neil Ford 146 

Nelson, Archibald 5 

Newspapers 253 

News, Slow Progress of, in the Revolution 131 

North Carolina i, 114, 115, i65 

North Carolina and Henderson Company Lauds 258 

North Carolinians Explore Kentucky i 

North Carolina Riflemen 60 

Noggins 41 

Nourse, James 18 

Oconistoto 3, 8, 151 

Ohio Company 228 

Ohio Indians ^^, 78 

Ohio River 58, 65, 6g, 71, 75, 81, no, 127 

Old Fields, The 1,7 

Oldham, Jesse 108 

Opost, League at 247 

Orange County, North Carolina 4 

Osnaburgs 25, 175 

Otter Creek 9, 12, 16, 20, i6g, 172, 188 

Overflows at Boonesborough 24 

Overhill Indians 3 

Oxford, North Carolina 42, 212 

Pack- Horses 10, 13, 15, 40. 67, 75, 79, 11 o, 112 

Paint Lick Expedition 105 

Panics of Settlers 15, 21, 52, iig, 184, 186 

Parratt, James 1 50 

Path Deed, The S, 257 

Patillo, Henry 219 

Patriots at Boonesborough 35, 53, 100 

Patton, James 118 

Peace Celebration at Boonesborough 132 

Peace Commissioners at Boonesborough 87 

Peake, Jesse 108 

Peaks of Otter 9 

Peck, J . M 40, 76 

Peeke, James 161 



Index 281 

Peltry 

Pendegrass, Garrett. ...'.'.'..".'.". V.".".'.".'.'.'.'.'."'.'"' ' "*' '°' '°' 

Pennsylvania Settlers ^'*^ 

Perrj', James ' ^5 

Petition of Committee of West Fincastle ^^^ 

Petition of Transylvanians ... ^^^ 

Piggins '" 47, 241 

Pioneers, Carelessness of '^^ 

Piqua Expedition ' . " '^^ 

Pleck, John '^' 

Pogue, William ^55 

Point Pleasant ■*'' '^^' ^'*° 

Pompey, the Negro ^' ^' 

Porter, Samuel '''*' ^'^ 

Portwood, Page 38, 255 

Powder Magazine " " _ ^^' '^^ 

Powell, Levin ^^' ^^ 

Powell's Mountain ' ' ' 

Powell's River .........!.. ''*^' '^^ 

Powell's Valley \ M?- 163 

Powwows... .'.'.■.'.'.■.'.".■.■.'.■.■.■.■.'.':.''•'''''''''' ''°'''^ 

Powwow, The, at Boonesborough ^' ^ 

Prayer for Royal Family ^^ 

Price, Thomas ^ ^ 

Proceedings of Transylvania Proprietors '^ 

Proclamation Money ^^ 

Proclamation of Governor Martin '^ 

Proclamation of Lord Dunmore 5.147 

Proclamation of Transylvania Company . « " '^a 

Proctor, Nicholas 48. 248 

Proctor, Reuben ^^^ 

Proprietary Government " ^^^ 

Proprietary Government, Opposition to. . 44-49 

Puckashinwa 4i, 43. 47. 54 

Queer Conducts of British and Indians . . a^ 

Quit Rents ^3 

Raft, The Drifting V.'.V.'. ■.".■.■.■. V.V.'.V.V. ^^' ^''^' "^ 

Rains and the Great Siege ' ^ ^^ 

^ 94. 96, 98, loi 

37 



282 Index 



Ramsay's Annals ; 4,7 

Rawlings, Pemberton, Killed 117 

' ' Rebels of Kentuck " 7 1 , 100 

Reese, D.N 7 

Regulators, The 4i 145 

Reid, Nathan 51 

Religious Freedom in Transylvania 209 

Reply of John Williams to Harrodsburg Remonstrance 230 

Revolution, Spirit of, at Boonesborough 41, 62, 100 

Richland Creek 52,171 

Richmond, Kentucky 11 

Richmond, Made Capital of Virginia 113 

Richmond, Virginia 113 

Riflemen 13, 23, 50, 52, 57, 60, 77, 88, 93, 97, 246 

Roberts, Benjamin 118 

Robertson, Charles, Deposition 54 

Robertson's Station i, 6, 161 

Rockcastle River 104, 138, 163 

Rollins or Rawlings iii, 116, 117, 255 

Roll of Holder's Company 255 

Ross, Hugh 255 

Ruddle's Station 107, 109 

Ruse of Boonesborough People 87 

Sailings, John 143 

Salt 14, 15, 19, 34, 39, 40, 41, 183 

Salt Famine 32, 38. 54- 5i. 63, 179 

Salt Lick 17, i9i 143 

Salt-makers Captured 65, 78, 86, 117 

Salt River 40, 175 

Salt Spring, the Secret 68 

Salt, Value of 64 

Saltville, Virginia 38, 64 

Sanders 45,237 

Savanooko 8,151 

Scalping 37, 1 16, 128 

Scalps, Reward for 45, 68 

School at Boonesboroiigh 109 

Searcy, Bartlett 255 



Index 283 



Searcy, Reuben 255 

Sennight 177 

Sermon, the First in Kentucky 30, 177 

Sevier, John 169 

Shane, John D 72, 130 

Shawanese 5. 33> 46, 5°. 5i. 56. 65. 66, 68, 71, 72,74, 77, 

90, 108, 109, 117, 131 

Shawanese at Boone's Station 131 

Shelby, Isaac 54 

Shelbyville, Kentucky 107 

Siege, The Great, of Boonesborough 72, 251 

Siege, The Great, of Boonesborough Abandoned 100 

Silas Deane's Letter 219 

Six Nations, The 143, 228, 24 1 

Skaggs' Trace 121 

Slaughter, Thomas 175, 196 

Smith, Dan 160 

Smith's Ferry 115 

Smith, William Bailey 13, 51, 55, 58, 67, 81, 87, 98, 115, 156 

Smythe, John F. D 32 

Snead, W. B. G 115 

Snoddy, John 38 

Snoddy's Fort 2, 38, 147 

Sons of Liberty 53, 118, 132 

Sorrell River 171 

South, John, Junior 255 

South, John, Senior 255 

South, the Younger 255 

South, Thomas 255 

Spinning Wheel 40 

Springs 18, 68, 157, 170, 172 

Stafford County, Virginia 108, 109 

Staguer, Barney 41, 255 

St. Asaph 28 

Stearns, Jacob 255 

Stephenson, John 255 

Stewart 171 

Stoner, Michael 25, 57, 172 



284 In de 



X 



store at Boonesborough, The • . .• 25,37 

Story of Bryan's Station 127 

Stratagems and Tricks 57, 85, 87, 90, 93, 105, 128 

Strode's Station 107, 1 19 

Sulphur 15 

Sulphur Spring ig, 39, 135, 166 

Sulphur Well 135 

Sunbonnets 40 

Superstitions of Settlers 130 

Surrender of Burgoyne Celebrated 62 

Sycamore Hollow 20, 24, 87, 104, 134 

Sycamore Shoals i, 6, 7, 9, 20 

Sycamores, The Four 49 

Sycamore, The Old 136 

Sycamore Trees 19, 49, 88, 90, 135, 136 

Surveyors 14, 44, 54, 174, 210, 233, 234 

Surveys 214,217 

Survey Warrant of Henderson and Company 240 

Tanguay, Historian 103 

Tate, Samuel 11 

Tate's Creek 11 

Taylor, Alfred 7 

Taylor, Edmund iii 

Tellassee 2 

Tellico 2 

Tenase 157 

Tennessee 157 

Tennessee River 151 

Tents 173, 175 

Thoughts on Government 43 

Thruston, Charles iii, 256 

Thwaits 66 

Tivity. See Twetty. 

Tobacco in Kentucky 133 

Todd, John 57 

Torches, Blazing, Used 95, 10 1 

Tories 32 

Trabue, Daniel 87, 105 



Index 285 



Trails and Traces 10, 16, 17, 75, 121, igo 

Transylvania Colony 27, 29 

Transylvania Compact 30 

Transylvania Company 3. 4. 7. 9. 12, 16, 27 

Transylvania Company, Members of 29, 151 

Transylvania Government Abolished 54 

Transylvania House of Delegates 29,41 

Transylvania House of Delegates, Journal of ig6 

Transylvania Land Prices Raised 44 

Transylvania Purchase Declared Void 106, 253 

Transylvania, The Name 28, 47, 55, 206 

Transylvania, Town of 134 

Traveling Church iig 

Treaty of Paris 127, 131 

Treaty of Point Pleasant 5 

Treaty of Watauga 8, 157, 161 

Treaty at Boonesborough 85, 88 

Turey, Valentine 156 

Turkeys 164, 166 

Twetty, William 10, 11, 161, 164, 168 

United State Register 8,108 

Vallandigham, Benoni 255 

Vance County, North Carolina 53, 115 

Vegetables 32, 61, 83, 179 

Vincennes 70, 71 , 107 

Virginia and Indian Lands 48 

Virginia Archives 8, 31, 122, 157 

Virginia, Campbell's History 69 

Virginia Convention 31, 43, 47 

Virginia Convention, Journal of 47, 48 

Virginia Gazette 53 

Virginia Land Grant to Henderson Company 55, 254 

Virginia Ownership of Kentucky 48 

Wages 239,252 

Walden's Ridge 3 

Walker, Felix 11, 19, 161, 164, 168 

Walker, Felix, Narrative 6, 11, 161 

Walker, Thomas 5, 143 



286 Ind 



ex 



Wallen's Gap 38, 40, 146 

Warriors' Path 3, 10, 50 

Washington County, Virginia 71, 252 

Watauga i, 2, 3, 6, 7, 123, 161 

Watauga Association 7 

Watauga River 1,7 

Watch Tower, the 93 

Water, Lack of, at Boonesborough 36, 59, 63, 70, 82, 97 

Watkins, Captain 64 

Weber, John 255 

Wedding, First at Boonesborough 52 

West Fincastle 47 

Western Review 70 

Western Waters of Fincastle 245 

Wharton, John 230 

Wheeler's History, North Carolina 4i 54 

White, Benjamin 108 

White Oak Station 36, 128 

Wilcoxson, Daniel 255 

Wilderness Road 6, 9, 10, 16, 17, no, 192 

Williamsboro . . 53, 115, 116 

Williamsburg 54, 113, 193 

Williams, Edward 108 

Williams, John 4, 37, 44, 53, 213, 230 

Williams, John, Report on Transylvania Affairs 232 

Wills, Robert 171 

Wilson, Moses 255 

Wisconsin Historical Society i6g, 170 

Women at Boonesborough 40, 59 

Wooden Cannon, The 95 

Wood, M. B ... 38 

Worthington, E 118 

Wyandots 118, 126 

Wythe, George 43, 226 

Yadkin, The 38, 145 

Yellow Mountain 7 



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